It was from the woman who had sold him the beautiful corsage of old point d'Alencon, his first present to Clotilde.

That evening, at about ten o'clock, when Clotilde went downstairs for a moment to give an order to Martine before she should have gone to bed, Pascal profited by the opportunity of being left alone, to go and lay the little box containing the lace corsage on the young girl's bed.

The modest lace flounce that falls in vertical folds decreases her formidable corsage.

Narbonne est belle, dit le roi, Et je l'aurai; je n'ai jamais vu, sur ma foi, Ces belles filles-là sans leur rire au passage, Et me piquer un peu les doigts à leur corsage.

She knew the corsage, she had admired it with him one day wonderingly, wishing for it only to place it on the shoulders of the Virgin at St. Saturnin, an antique Virgin adored by the faithful.

At ten o'clock he left the house, saying he would go himself to see Ramond; but he had another object in going outhe had seen at a show in Plassans a corsage of old point d'Alencon; a marvel of beauty which lay there awaiting some lover's generous folly, and the thought had come to him in the midst of the tortures of the night, to make a present of it to Clotilde, to adorn her wedding gown.

# [Footnote 102: #effacées#, drawn back and down so as to set off the corsage.]

She had lighted the two candles in it, and the antique, pleasant chamber, with its hangings of faded rose color, seemed transformed into a chapel; and on the bed, like a sacred cloth offered to the adoration of the faithful, she had spread the corsage of old point d'Alencon.

Those who do not approve of the décolleté style of dress, or whose ungraceful proportions might well be entirely concealed, can wear with appropriateness and benefit the corsage shown in No. 64.

[Illustration: NO. 67] As is obvious in No. 67, the stout woman apparently increases her breadth by wearing a flamboyant corsage, and she hides the most exquisite lines of her arm with her sleeves.