It was to this shop that Juliette, soon after the publication of _Idées Anti-Proudhoniennes_, was taken by her good friend Dr. Bonnard. She found Mlle. Beuque an odd creature. A quaint birth-marked, shrivelled-up little old maid, wearing a rough black serge gown, a big black poke bonnet tied with broad strings, she had invariably hanging over her arm, a capacious bag, half satchel, half basket. Aimé Beuque had known Fourier when he was a grocer at Lyons. Sitting at his feet she had imbibed his doctrine and become one of its most convincing advocates, winning for the new philosophy many a distinguished adherent. For in that poor little wizened unattractive body there burned a great soul passionately convinced that perfect harmony would one day evolve out of all our apparently hopeless social chaos. This little woman so charmed Juliette that she came away from the Fourier shop feeling that in _la chère petite vieille Beuque_, she had made a life-long friend. And for many a year whenever she was downhearted, depressed by the domestic trials which were now thickening around her, Juliette’s due feet would not fail to cross the bridge to Mlle. Beuque’s shop, in search of that encouragement and consolation which the “adorable” little spinster never failed to give her. One of the most delightful features of Paris literary society has ever been the habit of writers and readers to foregather for leisurely afternoon talk in some well-known book-shop—at Anatole France’s father’s, for example, on the Quai Voltaire; at his successor’s, Honoré Champion’s, on the Quai Malaquais, or at Charles Péguy’s at the office of “Les Cahiers de la Quinzaine,” in the Rue de la Sorbonne. Mlle. Beuque, too, had her afternoons; _le Jour des amis de notre vieille Beuque_ was an institution highly valued by Juliette and her Fourierist friends. The great and shining light, _le grand homme_ of _Tante Beuque’s_ shop parlour, was the eminent writer on natural history, Alphonse Toussenel. His name had been a household word for Juliette in her childhood. Out of Toussenel’s book _L’Esprit des Bêtes_, Dr. Lambert had told his little girl many a thrilling tale about the habits of insects. And when, in their walks, they came to an ant-hill, father and daughter would both lie down flat while the red republican parent showed the ants at their work, designating the fighters, the layers of eggs and so forth, and declaiming loudly against the laziness of the queen ant as against that of all other royalties.