e roof of the notary's
house at the slate-covered bell tower in order to assure himself that
that was the quiet spot where he had played hop-scotch when he was a
youngster. There seemed to be an effort making to clear the square;
some men were roughly crowding back the throng of idlers and gazers, and
looking more closely he was surprised to see, parked like the guns of
a battery, a collection of vans, baggage-wagons, and carriages open and
closed; a miscellaneous assortment of traps that he had certainly set
eyes on before.

It was daylight still; the sun had just sunk in the canal at the point
where it vanished in the horizon and the long, straight stretch of water
was like a sea of blood, and Maurice was trying to make up his mind
what to do when a woman who stood near stared at him a moment and then
exclaimed:

"Why goodness gracious, is it possible! Are you the Levasseur boy?"

And thereon he recognized Madame Combette, the wife of the druggist,
whose shop was on the market-place. As he was trying to explain to her
that he was going to ask good Madame Desvallieres to give him a bed for
the night she excitedly hurried him away.

"No, no; come to our house. I will tell you why--" When they were in the
shop and she had cautiously closed the door she continued: "You could
not know, my dear boy, that the Emperor is at the Desvallieres. His
officers took possession of the house in his name and the family are not
any too well pleased with the great honor done them, I can tell you. To
think that the poor old mother, a woman more than seventy, was compelled
to give up her room and go up and occupy a servant's bed in the garret!
Look, there, on the place. All that you see there is the Emperor's;
those are his trunks, don't you see!"

And then Maurice remembered; they were the imperial carriages and
baggage-wagons, the entire magnificent train that he had seen at Rheims.

"Ah! my dear boy, if you could but have seen the stuff they took from
them, the silver plate, and the bottles of wine, and the baskets of good
things, and the beautiful linen, and everything! I can't help wondering
where they find room for such heaps of things, for the house is not
a large one. Look, look! see what a fire they have lighted in the
kitchen!"

He looked over at the small white, two-storied house that stood at
the corner of the market-place and the Rue de Vouziers, a comfortable,
unassuming house of bourgeois aspect; how well he remember