three o'clock."

It seemed to astonish the good woman a little that any one could stay
in bed so late; but the tact which guides a refined nature, even without
education, prevented her from saying anything before the servants, and
she asked for Paul de Gery.

"He is abroad."

"Bompain Jean-Baptiste, then."

"He is with monsieur at the sitting."

Her great gray eyebrows wrinkled.

"It does not matter; take up my trunk just the same."

And with a little malicious twinkle of her eye, a proud revenge for
their insolent looks, she added: "I am his mother."

The scullions and stable-boys drew back respectfully. M. Barreau raised
his cap:

"I thought I had seen madame somewhere."

"And I too, my lad," answered Mme. Jansoulet, who shivered still at the
remembrance of the Bey's _fete_.

"My lad," to M. Barreau, to a man of his importance! It raised her at
once to a very high place in the esteem of the others.

Well! grandeur and splendour hardly dazzled this courageous old lady.
She did not go into ecstasies over gilding and petty baubles, and as she
walked up the grand staircase behind her trunk, the baskets of flowers
on the landings, the lamps held by bronze statues, did not prevent her
from noticing that there was an inch of dust on the balustrade, and
holes in the carpet. She was taken to the rooms on the second floor
belonging to the Levantine and her children; and there, in an apartment
used as a linen-room, which seemed to be near the school-room (to judge
by the murmur of children's voices), she waited alone, her basket on
her knees, for the return of her Bernard, perhaps the waking of her
daughter-in-law, or the great joy of embracing her grandchildren. What
she saw around her gave her an idea of the disorder of this house
left to the care of the servants, without the oversight and foreseeing
activity of a mistress. The linen was heaped in disorder, piles on
piles in great wide-open cupboards, fine linen sheets and table-cloths
crumpled up, the locks prevented from shutting by pieces of torn lace,
which no one took the trouble to mend. And yet there were many servants
about--negresses in yellow Madras muslin, who came to snatch here
a towel, there a table-cloth, walking among the scattered domestic
treasures, dragging with their great flat feet frills of fine lace
from a petticoat which some lady's-maid had thrown down--thimble here,
scissors there--ready to pick up again in a few minutes.

Jansoulet's