Lippincott's Magazine, page 49 by Various Authors
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virtuous city of the New World. We have tried to sketch it both as a city with a past and a city with a future. Could we have selected one for illustration that would be a better or sharper concentration of all that is good in American life?
MARIE FAMETTE AND HER LOVERS.
I.
Marie Famette is the prettiest girl in the market-place of Aubette. Her eyes are of such a sweet, soft blue, deeply shaded by long black lashes: her eyebrows are not black, but they are of a much darker tint than her hair, which (so much of it as can be seen under her full white cap-border) is a golden yellow. But it is not her eyes and her hair that make Marie so attractive: she has charmed young and old alike ever since she came, a toddling damsel of two years, and took her place beside her mother in the market-place of Aubette.
Madame Famette's was the best fruit-stall of the market. No one else could show such baskets of peaches and hampers of pears; and as to the citrouilles and potirons, their reputation was so established that by ten o'clock there was little to be seen of them among the glowing vegetables which decked the stall. Such radishes were not to be seen elsewhere--white and purple, as thick as carrots; and the carrots themselves like lumps of red gold, lying nestling beneath their feathered tops or setting off the creamy whiteness of the cauliflowers ranged in a formal row in front of them.
But Marie had always eclipsed all other beauty in the stall, and now that she had grown too big to be patted on the cheek and kissed by grown-up admirers, she had a host of victims in the sturdy young countrymen who came in to Aubette--either to bring mothers and sisters with their produce or to purchase for themselves.
Madame Famette has weak health, and lately Marie comes often to the market by herself, and is able to flirt to her heart's content, unchecked by her mother's presence. She is so bright, so arch, so ready with a sparkling answer, that it is no wonder her stall is always thronged a