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Many weeks had elapsed

The first of March had arrived The sun, which Dubartas, that classic ancestor of periphrase, had not yet dubbed the "Grand-duke of Candles," was none the less radiant and joyous on that account It was one of those spring days which possesses so much sweetness and beauty, that all Paris turns out into the squares and proh they were Sundays In those days of brilliancy, warmth, and serenity, there is a certain hour above all others, when the façade of Notre-Dame should be ad towards the west, looks the cathedral al more and more horizontal, withdraly from the pavement of the square, and mount up the perpendicular façade, whose thousand bosses in high relief they cause to start out froreat central roseflames like the eye of a cyclops, inflae

This was the hour

Opposite the lofty cathedral, reddened by the setting sun, on the stone balcony built above the porch of a rich Gothic house, which forle of the square and the Rue du Parvis, several young girls were laughing and chatting with every sort of grace and th of the veil which fell from their pointed coif, twined with pearls, to their heels, from the fineness of the embroidered cheli custoin bosoms, from the opulence of their under-petticoats still more precious than their overdress (auze, the silk, the velvet, hich all this was composed, and, above all, from the whiteness of their hands, which certified to their leisure and idleness, it was easy to divine they were noble and wealthy heiresses They were, in fact, Damoiselle Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier and her companions, Diane de Christeuil, Amelotte de Montmichel, Colombe de Gaillefontaine, and the little de Chaood birth, assembled at that moment at the house of the daneur de Beaujeu and Madame his wife, ere to come to Paris in the month of April, there to choose uerite, as to be received in Picardy fros Now, all the squires for twenty leagues around were intriguing for this favor for their daughters, and a goodly nuht or sent to Paris These four e of Madame Aloise de Gondelaurier,of a for's cross-bowhter to her house in the Place du Parvis, Notre- Dame, in Paris