One evening in July, hot and dusty, at the hour when the first gas-lights were beginning to twinkle in the misty twilight, I was walking slowly from Vaugirard through one of those long and depressing suburban streets lined on each side by houses of unequal height, whose porters and porteresses, in shirt sleeves and in calico, sat on the steps and imagined that they were taking the fresh air. Hardly any one passing in the whole street; perhaps, from end to end, a mason, white with plaster, a sergeant-de-ville, a child carrying home a four-pound loaf larger than himself, or a young girl hurrying on in hat and cloak, with a leather bag on her arm; and every quarter-hour the half-empty omnibus coming back to its place of departure with the heavy trot of its tired horses. Stumbling now and then on the pavement--for asphalt is an unknown luxury in these places--I went down the street, tasting all the delights of a stroller. Sometimes I stopped before a vacant lot to watch, through the broken boards of the fence, the fading glories of the setting sun and the black silhouettes of the chimneys thrown against a greenish sky. Sometimes, through an open window on the ground-floor, I caught sight of an interior, picturesque and familiar: here a jolly-looking laundress holding her flat-iron to her cheek; there workmen sitting at tables and smoking in the basement of a cabaret, while an old Bohemian with long gray hair, standing before them, sang something about "Liberty," accompanying himself on a guitar about the color of bouillon--the scenes of Chardin and Van Ostade. Suddenly I stopped. One of these personal pictures had caught my eye by its domestic and charming simplicity. [Illustration] She looked so happy and peaceful in her quiet little room, the dear old lady in her black gown and widow's cap, leaning back in an easy-chair covered with green Utrecht velvet, and sitting quietly with her hands folded on her lap. Everything around her was so old and simple, and seemed to have been preserved, less through a wise economy than on account of hallowed memories, since the honey-moon with monsieur of the high complexion, in a frock-coat and flowered waistcoat, whose oval crayon ornamented the wall. By two lamps on the mantle-shelf every detail of the old-fashioned furniture could be distinguished, from the clock on a fish of artificial and painted marble to the old and antiquated piano, on which, without doubt, as a young girl, in leg-of-mutton sleeves and with hair dressed _a la Grecque_, she had played the airs of Romagnesi.