in a gold-dotted emerald fringe over the head of any way-worn
traveller passing in,--making a brightness in a darkness, and
suggesting something not altogether uncheery in the welcome
provided. They were very humble folk who kept the Hotel Poitiers,--
the host, Jean Patoux, was a small market-gardener who owned a plot
of land outside Rouen, which he chiefly devoted to the easy growing
of potatoes and celery--his wife had her hands full with the
domestic business of the hotel and the cares of her two children,
Henri and Babette, the most incorrigible imps of mischief that ever
lived in Rouen or out of it. Madame Patoux, large of body, unwieldy
in movement, but clean as a new pin, and with a fat smile of
perpetual contentment on her round visage, professed to be utterly
worn to death by the antics of these children of hers,--but
nevertheless she managed to grow stouter every day with a
persistency and fortitude which denoted the reserved forces of her
nature,--and her cooking, always excellent, never went wrong because
Babette had managed to put her doll in one of the saucepans, or
Henri had essayed to swim a paper boat in the soup. Things went on
somehow; Patoux himself was perfectly satisfied with his small
earnings and position in life--Madame Patoux felt that "le bon Dieu"
was specially engaged in looking after her,--and as long as the
wicked Babette and the wickeder Henri threw themselves wildly into
her arms and clung round her fat neck imploring pardon after any and
every misdeed, and sat for a while "en penitence" in separate
corners reading the "Hours of Mary", they might be as naughty as
they chose over and over again so far as the good-natured mother was
concerned. Just now, however, unusual calm appeared to have settled
on the Patoux household,--an atmosphere of general placidity and
peace prevailed, which had the effect of imparting almost a stately
air to the tumble-down house, and a suggestion of luxury to the