Even when I pause before one of the little narrow portals to which I have been directed, there are few more signs of life, except that at the same moment I hear other footsteps behind me, and a baker stop to deliver a loaf. This is promising, as far as it goes, and enables me to present myself unostentatiously, under cover of the baker's basket, to a lady who opens the door. Unless I am greatly mistaken, that lady has a French face, and as it is a French lady for whom I am to inquire, I begin to {48} think I have come to the end of my quest. It is evident, however, from the surprised questioning look which greets my appearance, that visits from strangers are not of very frequent occurrence there. I can trace in the rather shrinking recognition accorded to my request to see the lady to whom I bring an introduction, the sensitiveness that belongs to that kind of poverty which has learned to endure in seclusion reverses that would be less bearable if they were exposed to a too obtrusive expression of sympathy. It is a positive relief to be left alone for a minute, standing in that narrow lobby, looking into a room which has the appearance of a disused scullery, while my errand is made known in another room on the right, to which I am presently bidden. It is a poor little place enough; poor, and little, and dim, even for an almshouse, and scarcely suggestive of comfort though a bright fire is burning in a grate, which somewhat resembles a reduced kitchen-range, and though the table which stands beneath the casement bears some preparations for the evening meal, and the cheap luxury of a cut orange on a plate. The walls are dim, the ceiling cracked and discoloured by the evident overflow of water in the room overhead; the furniture consists of a kind of couch which may do duty for a bed by night, and of two or three Windsor chairs, one of which has already been placed for me. It is a poor place enough; and yet the lady to whom I am at once introduced is ready to do its honours with a grace and dignity that well become her appearance and her name. Madame Gracieuse B——, for more than forty years resident in England, and speaking English with a purity of accent that is only rivalled by the more perfect music of the French in which she addresses me, has passed the threescore years and {49} ten which are counted as old age. Yet seeing her sweet, calm face; her smooth, broad, intelligent brow; the mild, penetrating scrutiny of her gentle eyes; the soft hair put back under the quaint French cap, shaped like a hood; those years remain uncounted; until, with a pleasant smile, only just too placid for vivacity, she tells how she came to this country in 1830, after the ruin of the fortunes of her house by the revolution which dethroned Charles X., and made her a governess in England, where so many of the old nobility sought a refuge and a home.