want anything. I have still something left in my
basket." And she put two figs and a crust of bread on the edge of the
table. Then, while she was eating: "And you, lad, your business? You
look very much sprucer than you did the last time you were at Bourg. How
smart you are! What do you do in the house?"

"Professor of massage," said Aristide gravely.

"Professor--you?" said she with respectful astonishment; but she did
not dare ask him what he taught, and Cabassu, who felt such questions a
little embarrassing, hastened to change the subject.

"Shall I go and find the children? Haven't they told them that their
grandmother is here?"

"I didn't want to disturb them at their work. But I believe it must be
over now--listen!"

Behind the door they could hear the shuffling impatience of the children
anxious to be out in the open air, and the old woman enjoyed this state
of things, doubling her maternal desire, and hindering her from doing
anything to hasten its pleasure. At last the door opened. The tutor came
out first--a priest with a pointed nose and great cheek-bones, whom we
have met before at the great _dejeuners_. On bad terms with his bishop,
he had left the diocese where he had been engaged, and in the precarious
position of an unattached priest--for the clergy have their Bohemians
too--he was glad to teach the little Jansoulets, recently turned out of
the Bourdaloue College. With his arrogant, solemn air, overweighted with
responsibilities, which would have become the prelates charged with the
education of the dauphins of France, he preceded three curled and gloved
little gentlemen in short jackets, with leather knapsacks, and great red
stockings reaching half-way up their little thin legs, in complete suits
of cyclist dress, ready to mount.

"My children," said Cabassu, "that is Mme. Jansoulet, your grandmother,
who has come to Paris expressly to see you."

They stopped in a row, astonished, examining this old wrinkled visage
between the folds of her cap, this strange dress of a simplicity
unknown to them; and their grandmother's astonishment answered theirs,
complicated with a heart-breaking discomfiture and constraint in dealing
with these little gentlemen, as stiff and disdainful as any of the
nobles or ministers whom her son had brought to Saint-Romans. On the
bidding of their tutor "to salute their venerable grandmother," they
came in turn to give her one of those little half-hearted shakes of
the han