Isabelle, who chanced to sit down near her, cast many pitying glances upon this forlorn little figure, but took care not to disturb the quiet sleep she seemed to be enjoying in her uncomfortable resting-place. After a little, when she had turned to speak to Serafina, who sat beside her, the child woke with a start, and pushing back the mass of dishevelled hair revealed a sad little face, so thin that the cheek bones were painfully prominent, and pale to ghastliness. A pair of magnificent, dark brown eyes, with heavy sweeping lashes, looked preternaturally large in her woe-begone little countenance, and at this moment were filled with wondering admiration, mingled with fierce covetousness, as she stared at Serafina’s mock jewels—and more especially at Isabelle’s row of pearl beads. She seemed fairly dazzled by these latter, and gazed at them fixedly in a sort of ecstasy—having evidently never seen anything like them before, and probably thinking they must be of immense value. Occasionally her eyes wandered to the dresses of the two ladies, and at last, unable to restrain her ardent curiosity any longer, she put out her little brown hand and softly felt of Isabelle’s gown, apparently finding exquisite delight in the mere contact of her finger-tips with the smooth, glossy surface of the silk. Though her touch was so light Isabelle immediately turned towards the child and smiled upon her encouragingly, but the poor little vagabond, finding herself detected, in an instant had assumed a stupid, almost idiotic look—with an instinctive amount of histrionic art that would have done honour to a finished actress. Then dropping her eyelids and leaning her shoulders against the hard back of the wooden settle she seemed to fall into a deep sleep, with her head bent down upon her breast in the old attitude. Meanwhile Maître Chirriguirri had been talking long and loudly about the choice delicacies he could have set before his guests if they had only come a day or two earlier, and enumerating all sorts of fine dishes—which doubtless had existed only in his own very vivid imagination—though he told a high-sounding story about the noblemen and grandees who had supped at his house and devoured all these dainties only yesterday. When at length the flow of his eloquence was checked by a display of ferocity on the part of the tyrant, and he was finally brought to the point, he acknowledged that he could only give them some of the soup called garbure—with which we have already made acquaintance at the Château de Sigognac, some salt codfish, and a dish of bacon; with plenty of wine, which according to his account was fit for the gods. Our weary travellers were so hungry by this time that they were glad of even this frugal fare, and when Mionnette, a gaunt, morose-looking creature, the only servant that the inn could boast, announced that their supper was ready in an adjoining room, they did not wait to be summoned a second time.