thousand miles from her own;
and a deathly sadness seized her, especially when, on her return home,
her mother spoke of sending her as an apprentice to Mademoiselle Le Mire,
a friend of the Delobelles, who conducted a large false-pearl
establishment on the Rue du Roi-Dore.

Risler insisted upon the plan of having the little one serve an
apprenticeship. "Let her learn a trade," said the honest fellow. "Later I
will undertake to set her up in business."

Indeed, this same Mademoiselle Le Mire spoke of retiring in a few years.
It was an excellent opportunity.

One morning, a dull day in November, her father took her to the Rue du
Rio-Dore, to the fourth floor of an old house, even older and blacker
than her own home.

On the ground floor, at the entrance to the hall, hung a number of signs
with gilt letters: Depot for Travelling-Bags, Plated Chains, Children's
Toys, Mathematical Instruments in Glass, Bouquets for Brides and Maids of
Honor, Wild Flowers a Specialty; and above was a little dusty show-case,
wherein pearls, yellow with age, glass grapes and cherries surrounded the
pretentious name of Angelina Le Mire.

What a horrible house!

It had not even a broad landing like that of the Chebes, grimy with old
age, but brightened by its window and the beautiful prospect presented by
the factory. A narrow staircase, a narrow door, a succession of rooms
with brick floors, all small and cold, and in the last an old maid with a
false front and black thread mitts, reading a soiled copy of the 'Journal
pour Tous,' and apparently very much annoyed to be disturbed in her
reading.

Mademoiselle Le Mire (written in two words) received the father and
daughter without rising, discoursed at great length of the rank she had
lost, of her father, an old nobleman of Le Rouergue--it is most
extraordinary how many old noblemen Le Rouergue has produced!--and of an
unfaithful steward who had carried off their whole fortune. She instantly
aroused the sympathies of M. Chebe, for whom decayed gentlefolk had an
irresistible charm, and he went away overjoyed, promising his daughter to
call for her at seven o'clock at night in accordance with the terms
agreed upon.

The apprentice was at once ushered into the still empty workroom.
Mademoiselle Le Mire seated her in front of a great drawer filled with
pearls, needles, and bodkins, with instalments of four-sou novels thrown
in at random among them.

It was Sidonie's business to sort the pea