embarkations in a tipsy attempt to row, and get
drowned? Are there no lovers' quarrels at
Fonlenay-aux-Roses, resulting in the customary
laudanum, or the usual and inexpensive branch
of a tree? Where is our midsummer harvest
from the Bois de Vincennes? Where are our
returns from the Foret de Fontainebleau ? And
the Palais Royal, and Frascati's—what has
become of them? Have half the world been
betting on the black, and the other half on the red,
and have both red and black turned up alternately,
so that both have won? It is incomprehensible.
And the assassinations? Is the Cité pulled
down? Are there no more bandits in the Rue
aux Fèves, no more liberated convicts on the
Quai de Billy, no more night-prowlers at the
outer barriers? And misery! misery that
always exists, that always brings its quota of
lodgers to the hôtel. Ma parole d'houneur, je
n'y vois guère."

And so the gossips went on. The womenfolk
had withdrawn to a window, and, softly
chatting among themselves, were watching the
ever-changing panorama on the river shores
beneath. Philibert was telling the guardian, of a
grand funeral which took place in the reign of
Louis the Eighteenth—a funeral on a raw, cold
November day—a day so cold, so raw, that three
personages, eminent in French history, standing
round the open grave, caught cold, and caught
their deaths, too; for they all expired in less
than three mouths afterwards.

"Let me see," prattled Philibert, counting
on his fingers; "there was Monsieur Marchangy,
he whom Béranger—what a funeral the great
poet will have!—castigated so mercilessly dans
le temps, ever so long ago. Then there was
that distinguished ornament to the bar,
Monsieur Robert de Saint-Vincent. And, finally,
there was Brillat-Savarin—Savarin the
unequalled, the incomparable, the illustrious
gastronomical philosopher who—"

"A-a-h!" Lily gave a little scream and ran
back, trembling like a frightened fawn, from the
window. Amanda followed her, and caught her
hand to calm her. Amanda was disturbed by
her friend's agitation, but she was not terrified.
She had looked from that window too often and
too long. Madame Thomas remained immovable:
her nose glued, seemingly, to the pane.

"What is it, my child?" cried the guardian,
starting up in some alarm.

"What is it, Ma'amselle Amanda?" the
master of the ceremonies echoed. " Perhaps,"
he continued, mentally, "my eloquence has
touched the sympathies of la petite Anglaise.
They are very sentimental, these charming
misses. Would that the effect the humble
Philibert may have made upon her would react
on the stony heart of Amanda. Oh! my
Amanda, my Amandine!" Monsieur Philibert,
be it remembered, was a widower, and more
than middle-aged; but he had not yet abandoned
all hopes of forming a second matrimonial
alliance. A pretty, amiable, well-to-do partner,
able to conduct during his absence on official
business a genteel mourning establishment,
a-maison de deuil, on the Boulevard des
Capuciues: this was his dream of bliss.

"It is nothing, it is nothing, papa," Amanda
hastened to reply to her father's query; "or,
rather, it is a mere trifle, a bagatelle; but
Ma'amselle Lily is not used to such sights, and
it has frightened her. It is your affair. C'est
quelqu'un qu'on porte ici— it is SOMEBODY who
is coming, my papa."

Lily had sunk into a chair, and had covered
her face with her hands, and was sobbing
without tears. The poor little thing was too
frightened to cry.

"Is it gone?" she asked, as Amanda bent
over her to soothe her.

"You silly little soul, there is nothing to be
alarmed at. I live in the midst of such things,
and they never trouble me. Papa takes care of
all that sort of thing."

Madame Thomas, with her nose to the pane,
gave a low prolonged sound, like "haough."
Madame Thomas was keen scented; she sniffed
the lodger from afar off.

The two men went up, and stood beside her.
And then they beheld, beneath them, that of
which Lily had caught but a distant glimpse.

First, there was a crowd. Two soldiers,
recently conscripted, who had just joined the
garrison of Paris, with gaby faces, ill-cut hair,
forage-caps yet void of the military manner of
setting on, and an inch of shirt visible between
the hems of their jackets and the waistbands of
their pantaloons. One was munching an apple,
and the other was smoking a halfpenny cigar,
of course. To them followed a water-carrier,
and a cook with her basket full of green-stuff,
who had just partaken of a morning sip
with the Aquarius aforesaid; a flock of ragged
boys in blouses, coming home from a primary
school, who were swinging their satchels, and
shrilly interchanging criticisms upon Somebody's
appearance and odour—especially upon his
odour; half a dozen workmen, with pipes in
their mouths;  and an old gentleman with a straw
hat, spectacles, and a blue gingham umbrella,
who may have been a member of the Institute, a
retired banker, a spy of the police, or a begging-letter
writer taking an airing, but who, with his
hat, his spectacles, and his umbrella, had formed
an integral portion of similar crowds any time
these fifty years: at the Federal Pact ceremonial
in the Champ de Mars, at the Feast of the
Goddess of Reason, at the whipping of Théroigne
de Mircourt, at the execution of Robespierre,
at the cannonade of the Eighteenth Brumaire,
at the explosion of the first Infernal Machine,
at the Coronation of Napoleon, at the entry of
the Allies into Paris in 'fourteen, at the Champ de
Mai in 'fifteen, at the removal of the Horses of
St. Mark from the Arch of the Carrousel, at the
assassination of the Duke of Berry, at the
barricades of July, at the Hôtel de Ville when
Jacques Lafayette showed the Duke of Orleans to
the mob as "the best of republics," at the riots
during the cholera year 'thirty-three, at the
funeral of General Lamarque, and the bloody
conflict in the Rue de la Tixeranderie, at the raising