Excerpt from Dames and Daughters of the French Court Near by under the shade of the beech trees two abbes are seated, the one a thrifty gentleman en gaged with counters and accounts, the other, younger than the first, an easy-going, visionary soul, who leans back in his arm - chair with hands clasped behind his head, dreaming idly. There comes upon these two staid abbes an inter ruption in the pleasing form of a small, debonair, young gentleman, dandling on silken hose and red heeled slippers, a bundle of books beneath his arm. He talks a moment with the abbes, and the one looks up from his accounts and the other stops his dreaming to laugh at some tale which the young man is telling. Quickly, however, the young man turns from the abbes and leaves the shade of the beech trees for the sunshine of the terrace. Mother, mother beautiful, he calls, will you not join us? We are all impatient for the reading and for you. Yes, yes, my little son, in a moment, she answers. Yet she tarries longer than a moment in further converse with the gardener. Madame's little son, who is in truth no less a personage than the Baron de Sevigne, looks from his mother to the abbes, makes a motion of comic resignation, and returns to the shade of the beech trees.

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