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Si vous eussiez vécu du temps de Gabrielle Je ne sais pas ce qu'on eût dit de vous, Mais on n'aurait point parlé d'elle.".

next morning Francesca received a letter from Guido, the first she had ever possessed. Even in our time, when they are so many in number—things of morning, noon, and night occurrence—a letter is a delight. We never hear the postman's knock without a vague sort of hope that it is for us. A letter, too, is one of the few mysteries that yet remain—a small and a transitory one, but still a mystery, though but of a moment. We have to open it. If these are a pleasure even now, what must they have been when an epistle was an event in a life, and when rarely any but a beloved hand traced the characters?

"I have such a happiness in store for you," said Madame de Mercœur; "now do guess."

"Guido!—what have you to tell me of him?"