procession through the town she stopped before one of
the houses in this street, halting the procession, and exclaimed:

"Oh, the pretty house! How I should like to go through it! To whom does
it belong?"

They told her the name of the owner, who was sent for and brought, proud
and embarrassed, before the princess. She alighted from her carriage,
went into the house, wishing to go over it from top to bottom, and even
shut herself in one of the rooms alone for a few seconds.

When she came out, the people, flattered at this honor paid to a citizen
of Gisors, shouted "Long live the dauphine!" But a rhymester wrote some
words to a refrain, and the street retained the title of her royal
highness, for

"The princess, in a hurry,
Without bell, priest, or beadle,
But with some water only,
Had baptized it."

But to come back to Isidore.

They had scattered flowers all along the road as they do for processions
at the Fete-Dieu, and the National Guard was present, acting on the
orders of their chief, Commandant Desbarres, an old soldier of the Grand
Army, who pointed with pride to the beard of a Cossack cut with a single
sword stroke from the chin of its owner by the commandant during the
retreat in Russia, and which hung beside the frame containing the cross
of the Legion of Honor presented to him by the emperor himself.

The regiment that he commanded was, besides, a picked regiment celebrated
all through the province, and the company of grenadiers of Gisors was
called on to attend all important ceremonies for a distance of fifteen to
twenty leagues. The story goes that Louis Philippe, while reviewing the
militia of Eure, stopped in astonishment before the company from Gisors,
exclaiming:

"Oh, who are those splendid grenadiers?"

"The grenadiers of Gisors," replied the general.

"I might have known it," murmured the king.

So Commandant Desbarres came at the head of his men, preceded by the
band, to get Isidore in his mother's store.

After a little air had been played by the band beneath the windows, the
"Rosier" himself appeared--on the threshold. He was dressed in white
duck from head to foot and wore a straw hat with a little bunch of orange
blossoms as a cockade.

The question of his clothes had bothered Mme. Husson a good deal, and she
hesitated some time between the black coat of those who make their first
communion and an entire white suit. But Francoise, her counsellor,