"You knew her, then?" asked Victor.
"Yes, I knew Pauline D'Arblay, slightly, but I have never seen her since her marriage, as Pauline Dusantoy."
"She is quite unchanged, at least she was when I last saw her, some years ago, and I think that she can never change," said Victor, enthusiastically. "She must always be beautiful, as she is good, and her native purity, I believe, must always resist the attacks of the world, and leave her unscathed from contamination."
"Where is she now?" asked the countess, after a few moments of silence; for in proportion to the warmth evinced by Victor in recalling these memories of the past, his companion was chilled into quiet reflections.
"In Algiers, I suppose," replied Victor, "where her husband, General Dusantoy, has been for years past."
"My enthusiasm for Pauline is only surpassed by my affection and reverence for her husband. I have known Dusantoy and have loved him from my earliest childhood, and have received from him more proofs of undeviating friendship and unwearied devotion than I can ever repay. He has saved my life, too, though he unwittingly took from me, what I believed at that time to be all that made life desirable," said Victor sadly, as they approached the palings of the Jardin Du Roi, through which the red and yellow roses and peonies, confident in their gorgeousness, were nodding their heads insolently at the gens d'arme, who paced listlessly before the gate. The verbenas and pansies, equally brilliant but less flaunting, were dotted about in compact groups in the parterres and on the lawn. The statue, surmounting the column in the centre of the lawn, blackened and defaced by the wear and tear of years, looked down grimly from its pedestal, as if to impose silence on all beneath. So that the jardin, in its absolute repose, found little favor in the eyes of children and nurses, who respectively chose for their gambols and their flirtations some more joyous and expansive locality. Its sole occupants on this occasion were an elderly priest, too much absorbed in his breviary to be conscious of the rustling of Mathilde's dress as she passed him, together with a pensive soldier, who possibly sought diversion from the pangs of unrequited affection by tracing with a penknife, on the stone bench which he occupied, an accurate outline of his sword.
"You knew Pauline d'Arblay as a child," said the countess to Victor, as they seated themselves on a bench at the extremity of the lawn.
"Yes, we were brought up together,—that is, our families were very intimate. She was the only child of her parents, and I was the youngest of a large family; but as my brothers and sisters were much older than myself, and Pauline was nearer my age, we were always together, and, until I was sent to college, she was my constant playmate."
"You must regard her as a sister, then," said Mathilde. "Remembrances of childish intimacy and souvenirs of soiled pinafores and soiled faces, I should think, would always be destructive of romance."