There was one precaution which she requested him to afford them—a signed paper in his handwriting, to account for their possession of the money, and state the ground of its being given, in case of any accident meanwhile from the police. And while the bootmaker was absent in search of ink-bottle and pen from some neighbour, Sir Godfrey turned, for the first time, from beside the elder woman’s chair in its recess, toward the attic casement which appeared as fascinating to her as to her charge. “My mother is still a peasant, Monsieur,” remarked the younger woman, apologetically; “she is never weary of admiring Paris!—Paris, with which she has so little to do—of which she knows nothing—which has kept us so long miserable!” A strange thrill of very novel feeling ran through Sir Godfrey as he pressed nearer, and looked. He almost shrank back with an emotion of awe, the sight was so unexpected, in such extreme contrast to that mean abode, from beside the unmeaning vacancy of the elder woman’s pleasure, the infant’s crowing sounds and motions, the repugnance he felt for the others, and his own engrossing thoughts: otherwise, on Willoughby’s single-minded, straightforward, unimpassioned character, with a very dormant fancy and but tardy movement of association, it might have struck with slight impress. Immense and startling from that height, indeed, was the prospect; nor the less so, that here and there some huge pile of neighbouring chimneys, some tower-top, or a wreath of lazy smoke, broke it up close at hand with a vividness of light and shade, or a distinctness of detail, that was thrust on the eye. Here a sunny perspective of roof, garretwindow, and chimney, ruddy at the top against blue air, with basking cats, and blooming pots, and garments hung to dry, that fluttered cheerfully, where the population of the upper world of Paris, the boulevards of its canaille and its unknown, showed their faces in the sun,—there a vast surging sea of slates, tossed hither and thither into tower, steeple, and shadowy dome, pierced by dusky gulfs and glooms—while midway ran out a dull thread of the Seine into a bridge, and broke forth beyond in dazzling splendour, where the reflection of the houses blended with the substance, so that all there seemed shattered and dripping in silver and gem-like radiance—with visionary structures lifted farther off among unsubstantial bowers, up to the sun’s viewless glory where he stood high in a blaze of light, as if clothed with a great mantle of indistinctness, and contemplated the vast city. Far beneath him floated the Hospital’s golden dome: the softened roar and clamour of Paris rose clear to the open attic casement, with sharper noises from close below it; one saw straight through an uninterrupted space, down upon streets and openings, quays, square, and garden-terrace, in a distinct bird’s-eye view, alive with the motion of minute citizens; scarce could it have been thought that