their tendrils in a knot of beauty, and hung their clusters in loving profusion about the favored spot where jasmine and ivy met, and married them.
Doubtless at high noon, in the broad vulgar middle of the day, when Madame Beck's large school turned out rampant, and externes and pensionnaires were spread abroad, vying with the denizens of the boys' college close at hand, in the brazen exercise of their lungs and limbs—doubtless then the garden was a trite, trodden-down place enough. But at sunset or the hour of salut, when the externes were gone home, and the boarders quiet at their studies; pleasant was it then to stray down the peaceful alleys, and hear the bells of St. Jean Baptiste peal out with their sweet, soft, exalted sound.
I was walking thus one evening, and had been detained, further within the verge of twilight than usual, by the still-deepening calm, the mellow coolness, the fragrant breathing with which flowers no sunshine could win now answered the persuasion of the dew. I saw by a light in the oratory window that the Catholic household were then gathered to evening prayer—a rite, from attendance on which, I now and then, as a Protestant, exempted myself.
"One moment longer", whispered solitude and the summer moon, "stay with us: all is truly quiet now; for another quarter of an hour your presence will not be missed: the day’s heat and bustle have tired you; enjoy these precious minutes".
The windowless backs of houses built in this garden, and in particular the whole of one side was skirted by the rear of a long line of premises—being the boarding houses of the neighboring college. This rear, however, was all blank stone, with the exception of certain attic loop-holes high up, opening from the sleeping-rooms of the woman-servants, and also one casement in a lower story said to mark the chamber or study of a master. But, though thus secure, an alley, which ran parallel with the very high wall on that side the garden, was forbidden to be entered by the pupils. It was called indeed "l’allée défendue", and any girl setting foot there would have rendered herself liable to as severe a penalty as the mild rules of Madame Beck’s establishment permitted. Teachers might indeed go there with impunity; but as the walk was narrow, and the neglected shrubs were
