away from the world. She only went out to attend the seven-o'clock Mass
on Sunday mornings, as Hubertine had obtained permission for her to
study at home, fearing that, if sent to school, she might not always
have the best of associates. This old dwelling, so shut in, with its
garden of a dead quiet, was her world. She occupied as her chamber a
little whitewashed room under the roof; she went down in the morning to
her breakfast in the kitchen, she went up again to the working-room in
the second story to her embroidery. And these places, with the turning
stone stairway of the turret, were the only corners in which she passed
her time; for she never went into the Huberts' apartments, and only
crossed the parlour on the first floor, and they were the two rooms
which had been rejuvenated and modernised. In the parlour, the beams
were plastered over, and the ceiling had been decorated with a palm-leaf
cornice, accompanied by a rose centre; the wall-paper dated from the
First Empire, as well as the white marble chimney-piece and the mahogany
furniture, which consisted of a sofa and four armchairs covered with
Utrecht velvet, a centre table, and a cabinet.

On the rare occasions when she went there, to add to the articles
exposed for sale some new bands of embroidery, if she cast her eyes
without, she saw through the window the same unchanging vista, the
narrow street ending at the portal of Saint Agnes; a parishioner pushing
open the little lower door, which shut itself without any noise, and the
shops of the plate-worker and wax-candle-maker opposite, which appeared
to be always empty, but where was a display of holy sacramental vessels,
and long lines of great church tapers. And the cloistral calm of all
Beaumont-l'Eglise--of the Rue Magloire, back of the Bishop's Palace,
of the Grande Rue, where the Rue de Orfevres began, and of the Place du
Cloitre, where rose up the two towers, was felt in the drowsy air, and
seemed to fall gently with the pale daylight on the deserted pavement.