As they begin to flock in, you will see through the alley gate a dark, thick-set man, of middle age, but with very little hair, come and stand at the foot of the steps, in the doorway. It is Sorel, the master of the house; for this is the _Maison Sorel_. Some of his guests he greets with a Noachian deluge of swift French words and high-pitched cries of welcome. It is thus that he receives those capitalists, the bear-leaders from the Pyrenees; it is thus that he greets the grizzled man in the blue cap and blouse,--Fidèle the old soldier, Fidèle the pensioner, to whom a great government, far away, at Washington, doubtless with much else on its mind, never forgets to send by mail, each quarter-day morning, a special, personal communication, marked with Fidèle's own name, enclosing the preliminaries of a remittance: “Accept” (as it were) “this slight tribute.” “_Ah! que c'est un gouvernement! Voilà une république!_” Even a Frenchman may be proud to be an American! Most of his guests, however, Sorel receives with a mere pantomime of wide-opened eyes and extended hands and shrugged-up shoulders, accompanied by a long-drawn “_Eh!_” by which he bodies forth a thousand refinements of thought which language would fail to express. Does a fresh immigrant from the Cévennes bring back at night but one or two of the gay balloons with which she was stocked in the morning, or, better, none; or, on the other hand, does a stalwart man just from the rich Brie country return at sundown in abject despair, bringing back almost all of the red and blue globes which floated like a radiant constellation of hope about his head when he set forth in the early morning, Sorel can express, by his “_Eh!_” and some slight movement, with subtle exactness and with no possibility of being misapprehended, the precise shade of feeling with which the result inspires him. But there he stops. Nothing is said. Sorel is a philosopher: he has indicated volumes, and he will not dilute with language. One who has fired a little lead bullet does not need to throw after it a bushel of mustard-seed. The company, as they come in, one by one, wash their hands and faces, if they see fit, at the kitchen sink, and dry them on a long roller-towel,--a device adopted, probably, from the Americans. Then they retire to the room behind the kitchen, and seat themselves at a long table, at which the bear-leaders place themselves only after seeing their animal fed, in the coalhole, where he is quartered.