Before we left the _pension bourgeoise_ our front door was hung with heavy black curtains, and our Maiden passed forth into the broad day for the first time in ten years. She went out unsmiling, uncooing, without flutter or quirk, and no date upon her pine coffin, for with her last breath she had forbidden it. "Nobody need know that I have lived more than fifty years," she murmured; "and don't let Monsieur Boulanger look at me when I am dead." One of our widows--Madame Notte--was almost stone-deaf. She was a dwarfish creature, passionately fond of cards, waxing into terrible tempers over them, and with only one interest in life,--worshipful love of her only son, a not too beautiful _citoyen_ of fifty. This son fell ill and died. Poor Madame Notte knew of his illness, but not of its danger and final end. It was thought best to keep from her the knowledge that she was childless, lest the shock should be too great for her frail strength. She was told he had gone to Italy for his health; and when his widow and daughters came twice each week to visit her, they left their weeds at home, came in a close carriage in their gayest attire, and laughed and talked to her blithely with heavy hearts. All about the poor old mother we talked openly and freely of her loss and our pity, and she sat as unwitting as stone of it all. But when we put our mouths to her ear and asked for her son, a beautiful change always dawned upon the leaden countenance. "He has gone away," she invariably smiled,--"gone to a better country, where it is always summer. When I see him again he will be well, quite well." She, too, passed under the heavy black curtains that winter; and from our hearts we prayed that all was well with them in that better country where it is always summer. One of our Relicts prided herself upon her English, and criticised ours. "They speak English fairly well: I can _understand_ them," I once heard her say of us to a group of Relicts in the garden; "but of course they speak only a _patois_: they are Americans." "Why say you always to your infant, 'Hurry, my darling'?" she asked one day. "The pure Englishes says always, ''Urry, me darlink.'" Madame had acquired her English from her defunct lord, a commercial traveller from Lancashire. One day, glancing at an envelope I had just addressed, she remarked, "_Eh bien!_ you Americans are very like English, after all. In England the last name of almost every monsieur is 'Esq.'!" Another day she sweetly remarked, "This knife has very bad bladders." As knives in our country are not generally endowed with that physical possession, I could only stare my astonishment. "Eh, I see! It is an _English_ word, and you do not understand it. It means _lame_." By which I discovered that had she spoken our transatlantic _patois_ she would have said "_blades_."