Page:Tales of Today.djvu/126

110 had been told at the marquise's the night before. Then I reflected that there are loves that are predestined in heaven. Why should not the object of my affections be named Lucrèce? What reason was there why she should not be like the Lucrèce in the Aldobrandi gallery?

It was broad day, I was but a couple of steps away from a charming young lady, and no thought of evil intruded upon the emotion that I experienced. I was before the house. It bore the number 13—an omen of ill. Alas! it did not answer in the slightest degree to the idea that I had formed from having seen it by night. It was not a palace, very far from it, I beheld an inclosure of moss-covered walls, blackened by time, behind which rose the branches of a few ill-cared-for fruit trees. At one corner of the inclosure stood a pavilion of a single story, with two windows opening on the street, both of them closed by old wooden shutters reinforced on the outside by numerous iron bars. The door was low, surmounted by an obliterated escutcheon, and was made fast, as it had been the night before, by a huge padlock attached to a chain. On this door was the inscription, written in chalk: This house for sale or to let.

And yet I could not be mistaken; on that side of the street the houses were so few in number as to render any confusion impossible. It was my padlock, beyond a doubt, and in addition two rose-leaves upon the pavement, close beside the door, indicated the very spot where my loved one had signaled me her declaration, and at the same time bore witness to the fact that no one ever swept the space before the house.

I questioned some poor people of the neighborhood