You’ve heard me speak of my _cousine_ de Maisonrouge, that _grande belle femme_ who, after having married, _en secondes noces_—there had been, to tell the truth, some irregularity about her first union—a venerable relic of the old noblesse of Poitou, was left, by the death of her husband, complicated by the crash of expensive tastes against an income of 17,000 francs, on the pavement of Paris with two little demons of daughters to bring up in the path of virtue. She managed to bring them up; my little cousins are ferociously _sages_. If you ask me how she managed it I can’t tell you; it’s no business of mine, and _a fortiori_ none of yours. She’s now fifty years old—she confesses to thirty-eight—and her daughters, whom she has never been able to place, are respectively twenty-seven and twenty-three (they confess to twenty and to seventeen). Three years ago she had the thrice-blest idea of opening a well-upholstered and otherwise attractive _asile_ for the blundering barbarians who come to Paris in the hope of picking up a few stray pearls from the _écrin_ of Voltaire—or of Zola. The idea has brought her luck; the house does an excellent business. Until within a few months ago it was carried on by my cousins alone; but lately the need of a few extensions and improvements has caused itself to be felt. My cousin has undertaken them, regardless of expense; in other words she has asked me to come and stay with her—board and lodging gratis—and correct the conversational exercises of her _pensionnaire_-pupils. I’m the extension, my good Prosper; I’m the improvement. She has enlarged the _personnel_—I’m the enlargement. I form the exemplary sounds that the prettiest English lips are invited to imitate. The English lips are not all pretty, heaven knows, but enough of them are so to make it a good bargain for me. Just now, as I told you, I’m in daily relation with three separate pairs. The owner of one of them has private lessons; she pays extra. My cousin doesn’t give me a sou of the money, but I consider nevertheless that I’m not a loser by the arrangement. Also I’m well, very very well, with the proprietors of the two other pairs. One of these is a little Anglaise of twenty—a _figure de keepsake_; the most adorable miss you ever, or at least I ever, beheld. She’s hung all over with beads and bracelets and amulets, she’s embroidered all over like a sampler or a vestment; but her principal decoration consists of the softest and almost the hugest grey eyes in the world, which rest upon you with a profundity of confidence—a confidence I really feel some compunction in betraying. She has a tint as white as this sheet of paper, except just in the middle of each cheek, where it passes into the purest and most transparent, most liquid, carmine. Occasionally this rosy fluid overflows into the rest of her face—by which I mean that she blushes—as softly as the mark of your breath on the window-pane.