"Pas beaucoup, monsieur;" this from one of the only two actual French women now in the establishment, the rest being lineal descendants only. The oldest, who is now going quietly and with a very pretty dignity out of the refectory, is ninety-four, and can not only hear a low-toned inquiry, but answers it in a soft, pleasant voice. She bears the weight of years bravely, but the {31} burden has perhaps been heavy; and she speaks in a mournful tone, as one looking forward to a mansion among the many—to a house not made with hands, may sometimes speak when even the grasshopper becomes a burden. As to a young person of sixty-five or thereabout, nobody regards her as having any real business to mention such a trifling experience of life; while of the men—most of whom seemed to have filed off for their pipe or newspaper—one remains finishing his dinner, for he has been on duty for the day, and is now winding up with a snack of bread-and-butter and the remainder of his mug of porter—a stoutly-built, hale, stalwart-looking gentleman who, sitting there without his coat, which hangs on the back of a chair, might pass for a retired master mariner, or a representative of some position requiring no little energy and endurance. I fancy, for the moment that he must be an official appointed to serve or carve and employed on the establishment. "Eighty-four," and one of the old weaving colony of Bethnal Green. There can be no mistake about it. Every inmate provides certificates and registers enough to make the claim undoubted; and as to the right by descent, half the people here carry it in their faces, and to the initiated, are as surely French, as they are undoubtedly weavers.