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 "Has he not told you?" she exclaimed, raising her eyebrows.

"One would hardly call our conversation confidential," I explained. "Is that what you find so droll?"

And indeed, she seemed in a rare good humor, and inexplicably gay. A curious Mona Lisa smile kept bending her lips and twinkling in her eyes. The lowering clouds outside, the creakings of the beams and rafters under the east wind, nor even the drab gloom of her surroundings seemed to dampen her sudden access of good nature. The events she had witnessed seemed also to please her. Was it spite that had made her smile when she watched my father and his visitors? Was it spite that made her smile now, as she gazed at the room's battered prosperity, and at my grandfather's portrait above the mantlepiece, in the unruffled dignity of its blackening oils?

"I was the coach," said Mademoiselle, "of Napoleon at Montmareuil. A dozen of them set upon the coach. The lead horses were killed, and in an instant they were at the doors. They flung them open, but he was not inside. Instead, the coach was filled with the consular police. The paper, the paper they had signed, was at