er ornamental shrubs are placed,
necessitating a greenhouse. On the side toward the square the house
is entered from a portico raised several steps above the level of
the street. According to the custom of small towns the gate of the
courtyard, used only for the service of the house or for any unusual
arrival, was seldom opened. Visitors, who mostly came on foot, entered
by the portico.

The style of the Hotel Soudry is plain. The courses are indicated by
projecting lines; the windows are framed by mouldings alternately broad
and slender, like those of the Gabriel and Perronnet pavilion in the
place Louis XV. These ornaments in so small a town give a certain solid
and monumental air to the building which has become celebrated.

Opposite to this house, in another angle of the square stands the
famous Cafe de la Paix, the characteristics of which, together with
the fascinations of its Tivoli, will require, somewhat later, a less
succinct description than that we have given of the Soudry mansion.

Rigou very seldom came to Soulanges; everybody was in the habit of going
to him,--Lupin and Gaubertin, Soudry and Gendrin,--so much were they
afraid of him. But we shall presently understand why any educated man,
such as the ex-Benedictine, would have done as Rigou did, and kept
away from the little town, after reading the following sketch of the
personages who composed what was called in those parts "the leading
society of Soulanges."

Of its principal figures, the most original, as you have already
suspected, was that of Madame Soudry, whose personality, to be duly
rendered, needs a minute and careful brush.

Madame Soudry, respectfully imitating Mademoiselle Laguerre, began by
allowing herself a "mere touch of rouge"; but this delicate tint had
changed through force of habit to those vermilion patches picturesquely
described by our ancestors as "carriage-wheels." The wrinkles growing
deeper and deeper, it occurred to the ex-lady's-maid to fill them up
with paint. Her forehead becoming unduly yellow, and the temples too
shiny, she "laid on" a little white, and renewed the veins of her youth
with a tracery of blue. All this color gave an exaggerated liveliness to
her eyes which were already tricksy enough, so that the mask of her face
would seem to a stranger even more than fantastic, though her friends
and acquaintances, accustomed to this fictitious brilliancy, actually
declared her handsome.

This ungainly creature, al