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 do as I do; this is a point of capital importance. You will take a bath to-morrow. I will show you."

Then Madame took me to her room, showed me her closets, her hangings, the place for everything, familiarized me with the service, all the time making remarks that seemed to me queer and not natural.

"Now," said she, " let us go to M. Xavier's room. That, too, will be in your charge. M. Xavier is my son, Mary."

"Very well, Madame."

M. Xavier's room was situated at the other end of the vast apartment. A coquettish room, hung in blue cloth with yellow trimmings. On the walls colored English engravings representing hunting and racing scenes, teams, châteaux. A cane-holder stood in front of a panel, — a real panoply of canes, with a hunting-horn in the middle, flanked by two mail-coach trumpets crossed. On the mantel, among many bibelots, cigar-boxes, and pipes, a photograph of a pretty boy, very young and still beardless, with the insolent face of a precocious dude and the uncertain grace of a girl, — the whole producing an effect that pleased me.

"That is M. Xavier," said Madame.

I could not help exclaiming, undoubtedly with too much warmth:

"Oh! what a handsome boy!"