admiration.


They drove through the Halles and the Rue de Rambuteau, thronged with
kitchen-gardeners' wagons; and, near the end of the Rue des Francs-
Bourgeois, they turned the corner of the Archives into the Rue de Braque.
There they stopped first, and Madame Chebe alighted at her door, which
was too narrow for the magnificent green silk frock, so that it vanished
in the hall with rustlings of revolt and with all its folds muttering.
A few minutes later, a tall, massive portal on the Rue des Vieilles-
Haudriettes, bearing on the escutcheon that betrayed the former family
mansion, beneath half-effaced armorial bearings, a sign in blue letters,
Wall Papers, was thrown wide open to allow the wedding-carriage to pass
through.

Thereupon the bride, hitherto motionless and like one asleep, seemed to
wake suddenly, and if all the lights in the vast buildings, workshops or
storehouses, which surrounded the courtyard, had not been extinguished,
Risler might have seen that pretty, enigmatical face suddenly lighted by
a smile of triumph. The wheels revolved less noisily on the fine gravel
of a garden, and soon stopped before the stoop of a small house of two
floors. It was there that the young Fromonts lived, and Risler and his
wife were to take up their abode on the floor above. The house had an
aristocratic air. Flourishing commerce avenged itself therein for the
dismal street and the out-of-the-way quarter. There was a carpet on the
stairway leading to their apartment, and on all sides shone the gleaming
whiteness of marble, the reflection of mirrors and of polished copper.

While Risler was parading his delight through all the rooms of the new
apartment, Sidonie remained alone in her bedroom. By the light of the