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D'RI AND I my part in our deception. Every afternoon she was off in a boat or in her calèche, and had promised to take me with her as soon as I was able to go.

"You know," said she, "I am going to make you to stay here a full month. I have the consent of the general."

I had begun to move about a little and enjoy the splendor of that forest home. There were, indeed, many rare and priceless things in it that came out of her château in France. She had some curious old clocks, tokens of ancestral taste and friendship. There was one her grandfather had got from the land of Louis XIV—Le Grand Monarque, of whom my mother had begun to tell me as soon as I could hear with understanding. Another came from the bedchamber of Philip II of Spain—a grand high clock that had tolled the hours in that great hall beyond my door. A little thing, in a case of carved ivory, that ticked on a table near my bed, Molière had given to one of her ancestors, and there were many others of equal interest.

Her walls were adorned with art treasures of the value of which I had little appreciation those