But frank as she was in her admiration of all the world, she remained curiously reticent about herself. "My poor grandmother used to say, you must turn your tongue seven times in your mouth before speaking," she said to me once; and I used to fancy she gave hers a few extra twists when it came to talking of her own affairs. Some few facts I gathered: that she had been at one time an _ouvreuse_ in a Marseilles theatre; at another, a tailoress,--how accomplished, the smart appearance of her husband in J.'s old coats and trousers was to show us; and that, always, off and on, she had made a business of buying at the periodical sales of the _Mont de Piete_ and selling at private sales of her own. I gathered also that they all knew her in Marseilles; it was Louise here, Louise there, as she passed through the market, and everybody must have a word and a laugh with her. No wonder! You couldn't have a word and a laugh once with Louise and not long to repeat the experience. But to her life when the hours of work were over, she offered next to no clue. Only one or two figures flitted, pale shadows, through her rare reminiscences. One was the old grandmother, whose sayings were full of wisdom, but who seemed to have done little for her save give her, fortunately, no schooling at all, and a religious education that bore the most surprising fruit. Louise had made her first communion, she had walked in procession on feast days. _J'adorais ca_, she would tell me, as she recalled her long white veil and the taper in her hand. But she adored every bit as much going to the Salvation Army meetings,--the lassies would invite her in, and lend her a hymn-book, and she would sing as hard as ever she could, was her account. Her ideas on the subject of the Scriptures and the relations of the Holy Family left me gasping. But her creed had the merit of simplicity. The _Boun Diou_ was intelligent, she maintained; _il aime les gens honnetes_. He would not ask her to hurry off to church and leave all in disorder at home, and waste her time. If she needed to pray, she knelt down where and as she was, and the _Boun Diou_ was as well pleased. He was a man like us, wasn't He? Well then, He understood. There was also a sister. She occupied a modest apartment in Marseilles when she first dawned upon our horizon, but so rapidly did it expand into a palatial house in town and a palatial villa by the sea, both with cellars of rare and exquisite vintages and stables full of horses and carriages, that we looked confidently to the fast-approaching day when we should find her installed in the Elysee at Paris. Only in one respect did she never vary by a hair's breadth: this was her hatred of Louise's husband.