"Don't make him vain."

"It is the truth. He knows it very well. Why should he be vain? An
American loves a pretty face; but a Frenchman loves what is a woman."
She rose and lifted the lamp, and let its ray search out a corner of the
room wherein the great bed stood, wooden and square, its posts black
with age, its bedding puffed about it and crowned with a scarlet
eiderdown as solid and deep as the bed itself.

"A fine bed; an old bed; it is possible that you will not believe me,
but I shared that bed with a bishop not two years ago."

Fanny's eyes were riveted on the bed.

Julien laughed. "In the worst sense, mother?"

"In the best, my son," bragged the old woman, sliding a skinny finger to
the tip of her nose. "You don't believe me?"

Coming nearer, she stood with the lamp held in her two hands resting on
the table, so that she towered over them in fluttering shawl and shadow.

"He arrived in the village one night in a great storm. It was past the
New Year and soldiers had been coming through the street all day to go
up to the lines beyond Pont-a-Moussons. I've had them sleeping in here
on the floor in rows, clearing away the table and lying from wall to
wall so thick that I had to step on them when I crossed the room with my
lamp. But that night there were none; they were all passing through up
to the front lines, and though the other end of the village was full, no
one knocked here. There was snow as there is to-day, but not lying still