t Virginie was taller and of a more powerful figure for
a woman than her cousin Clement was for a man. Her dark-brown hair was
arranged in short curls--the way of dressing the hair announced the
politics of the individual, in those days, just as patches did in my
grandmother's time; and Virginie's hair was not to my taste, or according
to my principles: it was too classical. Her large, black eyes looked out
at you steadily. One cannot judge of the shape of a nose from a full-
face miniature, but the nostrils were clearly cut and largely opened. I
do not fancy her nose could have been pretty; but her mouth had a
character all its own, and which would, I think, have redeemed a plainer
face. It was wide, and deep set into the cheeks at the corners; the
upper lip was very much arched, and hardly closed over the teeth; so that
the whole face looked (from the serious, intent look in the eyes, and the
sweet intelligence of the mouth) as if she were listening eagerly to
something to which her answer was quite ready, and would come out of
those red, opening lips as soon as ever you had done speaking, and you
longed to know what she would say.

"Well: this Virginie de Crequy was living with Madame Babette in the
conciergerie of an old French inn, somewhere to the north of Paris, so,
far enough from Clement's refuge. The inn had been frequented by farmers
from Brittany and such kind of people, in the days when that sort of
intercourse went on between Paris and the provinces which had nearly
stopped now. Few Bretons came near it now, and the inn had fallen into
the hands of Madame Babette's brother, as payment for a bad wine debt of
the last proprietor. He put his sister and her child in, to keep it
open, as it were, and sent all the people he could to occupy the half-
furnished rooms of the house. They paid Babette for their lodging every
morning as they went out to breakfast, and returned or not as they chose,
at night. Every three days, the wine-merchant or his son came to Madame
Babette, and she accounted to them for the money she had received. She
and her child occupied the porter's office (in which the lad slept at
nights) and a little miserable bed-room which opened out of it, and
received all the light and air that was admitted through the door of
communication, which was half glass. Madame Babette must have had a kind
of attachment for the De Crequys--her De Crequys, you
understand--Virginie's father, the Count;