The Delobelles' door was often open, disclosing a large room with a brick
floor, where two women, mother and daughter, the latter almost a child,
each as weary and as pale as the other, worked at one of the thousand
fanciful little trades which go to make up what is called the 'Articles
de Paris'.

It was then the fashion to ornament hats and ballgowns with the lovely
little insects from South America that have the brilliant coloring of
jewels and reflect the light like diamonds. The Delobelles had adopted
that specialty.

A wholesale house, to which consignments were made directly from the
Antilles, sent to them, unopened, long, light boxes from which, when the
lid was removed, arose a faint odor, a dust of arsenic through which
gleamed the piles of insects, impaled before being shipped, the birds
packed closely together, their wings held in place by a strip of thin
paper. They must all be mounted--the insects quivering upon brass wire,
the humming-birds with their feathers ruffled; they must be cleansed and
polished, the beak in a bright red, claw repaired with a silk thread,
dead eyes replaced with sparkling pearls, and the insect or the bird
restored to an appearance of life and grace. The mother prepared the
work under her daughter's direction; for Desiree, though she was still a
mere girl, was endowed with exquisite taste, with a fairy-like power of
invention, and no one could, insert two pearl eyes in those tiny heads or
spread their lifeless wings so deftly as she. Happy or unhappy, Desiree
always worked with the same energy. From dawn until well into the night
the table was covered with work. At the last ray of daylight, when the
factory bells were ringing in all the neighboring yards, Madame Delobelle
lighted the lamp, and after a more than frugal repast they returned to
their work. Those two indefatigable women had one object, one fixed