comprised a dining-room and a drawing-room on the right hand of the hall,
and a kitchen and a store place on the left. Upstairs there were four
bedrooms. Their scanty furniture seemed quite lost in those big rooms;
but, exempt from vanity as they were, they merely laughed at this. By way
of luxury they had simply hung some little curtains of red stuff at the
windows, and the ruddy reflection from these hangings seemed to them to
impart wonderfully rich cheerfulness to their home.

They found Zoe, their peasant servant, asleep over her knitting beside
the lamp in their own bedroom, and they had to wake her and send her as
quietly as possible to bed. Then Mathieu took up the lamp and entered the
children's room to kiss them and make sure that they were comfortable. It
was seldom they awoke on these occasions. Having placed the lamp on the
mantelshelf, he still stood there looking at the three little beds when
Marianne joined him. In the bed against the wall at one end of the room
lay Blaise and Denis, the twins, sturdy little fellows six years of age;
while in the second bed against the opposite wall was Ambroise, now
nearly four and quite a little cherub. And the third bed, a cradle, was
occupied by Mademoiselle Rose, fifteen months of age and weaned for three
weeks past. She lay there half naked, showing her white flowerlike skin,
and her mother had to cover her up with the bedclothes, which she had
thrust aside with her self-willed little fists. Meantime the father
busied himself with Ambroise's pillow, which had slipped aside. Both
husband and wife came and went very gently, and bent again and again over
the children's faces to make sure that they were sleeping peacefully.
They kissed them and lingered yet a little longer, fancying that they had
heard Blaise and Denis stirring. At last the mother took up the lamp and
they went off, one after the other, on tiptoe.

When they were in their room again Marianne exclaimed: "I didn't want to