In the morning he wrote a letter to his old sister, Mademoiselle
Servien, begging her to come and take up her abode with the little
one in the _Rue Notre-Dame des Champs_. The sister, who had lived
for many years in Paris at her brother's expense, for indolence
was her ruling passion, agreed to resume her life in a city where,
she used to say, folks are free and need not depend on their
neighbours.

One autumn evening she arrived at the _Gare de l'Ouest_ with Jean
and her boxes and baskets, an upright, hard-featured, fierce-eyed
figure, all ready to defend the child against all sorts of
imaginary perils. The bookbinder kissed the lad and expressed his
satisfaction in two words.

Then he lifted him pickaback on his shoulders, and bidding him
hold on tight to his father's hair, carried him off proudly to
the house.

Jean was seven. Soon existence settled down to a settled routine.
At midday the old dame would don her shawl and set off with the
child in the direction of Grenelle.

The pair followed the broad thoroughfares that ran between shabby
walls and red-fronted drinking-shops. Generally speaking, a sky
of a dappled grey like the great cart-horses that plodded past,
invested the quiet suburb with a gentle melancholy. Establishing
herself on a bench, while the child played under a tree, she would
knit her stocking and chat with an old soldier and tell him her
troubles--what a hard life it was in other people's houses.