"Yes," the voice of Père Jerome was saying, as his face appeared in the door--"Ah! Madame"-- "I lef' my para_sol_," said Madame Delphine, in English. There was this quiet evidence of a defiant spirit hidden somewhere down under her general timidity, that, against a fierce conventional prohibition, she wore a bonnet instead of the turban of her caste, and carried a parasol. Père Jerome turned and brought it. He made a motion in the direction in which the late visitor had disappeared. "Madame Delphine, you saw dat man?" "Not his face." "You couldn' billieve me iv I tell you w'at dat man purpose to do!" "Is dad so, Père Jerome?" "He's goin' to hopen a bank!" "Ah!" said Madame Delphine, seeing she was expected to be astonished. Père Jerome evidently longed to tell something that was best kept secret; he repressed the impulse, but his heart had to say something. He threw forward one hand and looking pleasantly at Madame Delphine, with his lips dropped apart, clenched his extended hand and thrusting it toward the ground, said in a solemn undertone: "He is God's own banker, Madame Delphine." CHAPTER VII. MICHÉ VIGNEVIELLE. Madame Delphine sold one of the corner lots of her property. She had almost no revenue, and now and then a piece had to go. As a consequence of the sale, she had a few large bank-notes sewed up in her petticoat, and one day--maybe a fortnight after her tearful interview with Père Jerome--she found it necessary to get one of these changed into small money. She was in the Rue Toulouse, looking from one side to the other for a bank which was not in that street at all, when she noticed a small sign hanging above a door, bearing the name "Vignevielle." She looked in. Père Jerome had told her (when she had gone to him to ask where she should apply for change) that if she could only wait a few days, there would be a new concern opened in Toulouse Street,--it really seemed as if Vignevielle was the name, if she could judge; it looked to be, and it was, a private banker's,--"U.L. Vignevielle's," according to a larger inscription which met her eyes as she ventured in. Behind the counter, exchanging some last words with a busy-mannered man outside, who, in withdrawing, seemed bent on running over Madame Delphine, stood the man in blue cottonade, whom she had met in Père Jerome's doorway. Now, for the first time, she saw his face, its strong, grave, human kindness shining softly on each and every bronzed feature. The recognition was mutual. He took pains to speak first, saying, in a re-assuring tone, and in the language he had last heard her use: "'Ow I kin serve you, Madame?" "Iv you pliz, to mague dad bill change, Miché."