the end of September. We are to go to Belleville, you know, to your
uncle Cardot."

"Yes, mamma."

"Above all," she said, in a low voice, "be sure never to speak about
servants; keep thinking all the time that Madame Moreau was once a
waiting-maid."

"Yes, mamma."

Oscar, like all youths whose vanity is excessively ticklish, seemed
annoyed at being lectured on the threshold of the Lion d'Argent.

"Well, now good-bye, mamma. We shall start soon; there's the horse all
harnessed."

The mother, forgetting that she was in the open street, embraced her
Oscar, and said, smiling, as she took a little roll from her basket:--

"Tiens! you were forgetting your roll and the chocolate! My child,
once more, I repeat, don't take anything at the inns; they'd make you
pay for the slightest thing ten times what it is worth."

Oscar would fain have seen his mother farther off as she stuffed the
bread and chocolate into his pocket. The scene had two witnesses,--two
young men a few years older than Oscar, better dressed than he,
without a mother hanging on to them, whose actions, dress, and ways
all betokened that complete independence which is the one desire of a
lad still tied to his mother's apron-strings.