through repeated ablutions, vanished. His green
velvet nether garments, likewise, suggested to
the observant spirit that they had originally
formed the covering of a Utrecht sofa of the
time of the First Empire, which had been very
liberally sat upon by the beaux and belles of
that epoch. He wore silk stockings of no
particular colour, and, where they were not cobweb,
his hose, like the late Sir John Cutler's, were
one darn. Still, any little short-comings that
might have been noticeable in his apparel were
amply compensated by a prodigious pair of cut
steel buckles in his shoes, and by a protruding
shirt frill or jabot: so white, so starched, and so
stiff, that it gave him the appearance of a piece
of Palissy-ware, cleaving with distended fin its
way through life, like one of poor Bernard's perch
through a dish.

"He wore that coat before the assembly of
notables met," whispered Madame Prudence.
"He was a running footman at Vieux Sablons.
He has worn l'épée au côté—the sword by his
side. Ah, the glad days!"

Anon they had passed through a cheerful
dining-room with the usual floor of inlaid wood,
light chintz hangings and furniture, and plenty
of mirrors. At each of the three windows there
was a glittering cage, and in each cage a canary
was singing.

"Hao! it is better than the staircase," quoth
Madame Prudence, slyly.

Lily thought so, indeed, when they came to the
next room, the saloon, where the mirrors had
richer frames—all tarnished, though—and where
there were more birds, as many as four in a cage,
and a beautiful globe full of gold and silver fish,
and some stately pictures of ladies in hoops, and
gentlemen with wigs and swords, and some
older portraits of cavaliers in slouched hats and
curled moustaches, and dames in ringlets and point
lace. Here the furniture was of dark carved wood
with elaborate cushions and backs in needlework.

"All Madame's doing," whispered the house-
keeper. "She is an angel at her needle, but they
were put together by the tapissier of the quarter.
The old furniture was broken to pieces; the
mirrors and the pictures my brother saved; but
there's not a portrait without a bullet-hole or the
gash of a knife in it, carefully mended; not a
looking-glass frame but the glass itself has been
smashed. What you see is nearly all that is left
of the château of Vieux Sablons."

Again they went on, until Thomas, lifting up a
heavy drapery of old tapestry veiling a door,
tapped discreetly at it. His large head
disappeared in the hangings, but he speedily
withdrew it, and turned it towards the visitors with
a reassuring grin.

"Madame will receive," he said. "She is not
saying her breviary. Go in, my children."

Lily observed, as he retired, that, although he
was as "upright as a dart," the gait of Vieux
Sablons was very feeble, and he hobbled.

Madame Prudence seemed to divine the girl's
thoughts.

"Yes," she said, with pleasant pride. "Thomas
is of a certain age. He is no longer in his first
youth. He is eighty, and for sixty-five years,
man and boy, has been in the service of the
family. But he is agile. Oh! he is alert. Ma
parole d'honneur, I think he could dance the
gavotte as well as Monsieur Vestris."

But here Madame Prudence was inwardly
reminded that priests' housekeepers have no right
to be critical on the execution of so mundane a
performance as the gavotte, and she was for a
moment covered with confusion. She muttered,
however, something about the old thoughts that
had come into her head through the presence of
young people, and, pushing aside the drapery,
led Lily in.

They found themselves in a neat smiling little
room that was half boudoir and half bedchamber,
the walls hung with antique tapestry in which
shepherds and shepherdesses, brave with ribbons
—for their very crooks and the necks of their sheep
were hung with the parti-coloured products of the
loom—were grinning as affably upon all comers
as Thomas, yclept Vieux Sablons. Their smiles
had somewhat faded from the stitches which
years agone had been fixed in perpetual
cachinnation by busy fingers now fleshless in the tomb,
but they continued to grin valorously. As though
there had really ever been such a place as
Arcadia, as though the real names of Corydon
and Phillis had not been Colin, and Margot,
who had pined in rags and penury, and fed
on black bread (and, when that was scarce, on
boiled grass), while the beaux in wigs had been
writing epigrams to the belles in hoops at the
tall-roofed château yonder. As though the
château had never been burnt down by Corydons
and Phillises infuriated by famine and oppression.
As though there had never been a guillotine
erected in permanency at the Mairie, a desecrated
parish church, a broken cross, and a Reign of
Terror. And the shepherds and shepherdesses
went on smiling, in a third floor in the Marais,
as they had once smiled in the great hall of Vieux
Sablons.

There were more birds in this room; and their
diversified twittering was, to tell truth, somewhat
embarrassing to the newly-arrived stranger.
One soon grew accustomed, however, to a riot
which of all riots is the most tolerable. There
was a dwarfish coffee-coloured pug-dog, too, of
the breed called "carlin"—a detestable little
beast with a red leather collar hung with bells,
and a face like that of a negro pugilist (who had
lost the fight) seen through the small end of an
opera-glass. This pet and treasure yapped and
japped about the room, and at first seemed
inclined to cultivate a hostile acquaintance with
Lily's ankles—dear me! how very late in the
day I am in telling you that our solitary one had
begun to have ankles, and that they were very
shapely—but was soon recalled to order by a
mild voice; a voice which addressed him now as
"little tyrant," and now as "little cherished one."