Two months later, one grey, mild November afternoon, Madame Caroline went up to the room where her brother's plans were kept, immediately after breakfast, in order to set to work. Her brother, when at Constantinople, busy with his great scheme of the Oriental railways, had asked her to go through all the notes he had made at the time when they had travelled through Asia Minor¹ together, and to draw up a kind of memoir², which would be an historical résumé of the question. During two long weeks already she had been trying to give her whole mind to this task. It was so warm that day that she let the fire go out and opened the window, whence, before sitting down, she gazed for a moment at the tall bare trees of the Beauvilliers garden, which had a violet hue³ against the pale grey sky.

She had been writing for nearly half an hour when the need of some document forced her to engage in a long search among the portfolios⁴ heaped upon her table. She rose, stirred up some other papers, and sat down again with her hands full; and whilst she was classifying various loose documents she came upon some religious pictures, an illuminated⁵ view of the Holy Sepulchre, and a prayer surrounded by emblems⁶ of the Passion, guaranteed to ensure salvation⁷ in those distressful⁸ moments when the soul is in peril⁹. She then remembered that her brother, like the pious¹⁰ fellow he was, had bought the pictures at Jerusalem. Emotion suddenly overcame her, and tears moistened her cheeks. Ah! that brother of hers, so intelligent, so long unappreciated, how happy he was in being able to believe, in being able to[Pg 220] refrain from smiling at that na?f view of the Holy Sepulchre, executed in the style of the pictures which are used to decorate sweetmeat boxes! And how happy he was, too, in being able to

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