her embroidery. And these places, with the turning
stone stairway of the turret, were the only corners in which she passed
her time; for she never went into the Huberts' apartments, and only
crossed the parlour on the first floor, and they were the two rooms
which had been rejuvenated and modernised. In the parlour, the beams
were plastered over, and the ceiling had been decorated with a palm-leaf
cornice, accompanied by a rose centre; the wall-paper dated from the
First Empire, as well as the white marble chimney-piece and the mahogany
furniture, which consisted of a sofa and four armchairs covered with
Utrecht velvet, a centre table, and a cabinet.

On the rare occasions when she went there, to add to the articles
exposed for sale some new bands of embroidery, if she cast her eyes
without, she saw through the window the same unchanging vista, the
narrow street ending at the portal of Saint Agnes; a parishioner pushing
open the little lower door, which shut itself without any noise, and the
shops of the plate-worker and wax-candle-maker opposite, which appeared
to be always empty, but where was a display of holy sacramental vessels,
and long lines of great church tapers. And the cloistral calm of all
Beaumont-l'Eglise--of the Rue Magloire, back of the Bishop's Palace,
of the Grande Rue, where the Rue de Orfevres began, and of the Place du
Cloitre, where rose up the two towers, was felt in the drowsy air, and
seemed to fall gently with the pale daylight on the deserted pavement.

Hubertine had taken upon herself the charge of the education of
Angelique. Moreover, she was very old-fashioned in her ideas, and
maintained that a woman knew enough if she could read well, write
correctly, and had studied thoroughly the first four rules of
arithmetic. But even for this limited instruction she had constantly to
contend with an unwillingness on the part of her pupil, who, instead of
giving her attention to her books, preferred looking out of the windows,
although the recreation was very limited, as she could see nothing but
the garden from them. In reality, Angelique cared only for reading;
notwithstanding in her dictations, chosen from some classic writer, she
never succeeded in spelling a page correctly, yet her handwriting was
exceedingly pretty, graceful, and bold, one of those irregular styles
which were quite the fashion long ago. As for other studies, of
geography and history and cyphering, she was almost completely igno