having
enough money to buy myself a penny-loaf, it wasn't the time to put
on any airs. So I tell him that I accept. He goes for a cab; we
get into it; and he brings me right straight here."

Positively M. de Tregars required his entire self-control to conceal
the intensity of his curiosity.

"Was this house, then, already as it is now?" he interrogated.

"Precisely, except that there were no servants in it, except the
chambermaid Amanda, who is M. Favoral's confidante. All the others
had been dismissed; and it was a hostler from a stable near by who
came to take care of the horses."

"And what then?"

"Then you may imagine what I looked like in the midst of all this
magnificence, with my old shoes and my fourpenny skirt. Something
like a grease-spot on a satin dress. M. Vincent seemed delighted,
nevertheless. He had sent Amanda out to get me some under-clothing
and a ready-made wrapper; and, whilst waiting, he took me all
through the house, from the cellar to the garret, saying that
everything was at my command, and that the next day I would have a
battalion of servants to wait on me."

It was evidently with perfect frankness that she was speaking, and
with the pleasure one feels in telling an extraordinary adventure.
But suddenly she stopped short, as if discovering that she was
forgetting herself, and going farther than was proper.

And it was only after a moment of reflection that she went on,

"It was like fairyland to me. I had never tasted the opulence of
the great, you see, and I had never had any money except that which
I earned. So, during the first days, I did nothing but run up and
down stairs, admiring everything, feeling everything with my own
hands, and looking at myself in the glass to make sure that I was
not dreaming. I rang the bell just to make the servants come up;
I spent hours trying dresses; then I'd have the horses put to the
carriage, and either ride to the bois, or go out shopping. M.
Vincent gave me as much money as I wanted; and it seemed as though I
never spent enough. I shout, I was like a mad woman."

A cloud appeared upon Mme. Zelie's countenance, and, changing
suddenly her tone and her manner,

"Unfortunately," she went on, "one gets tired of every thing. At
the end of two weeks I knew the house from top to bottom, and after
a month I was sick of the whole thing; so that one night I began
dressing.

"'Where do you want to go?' Amanda asked me.
'Why, to Mabille