"Oh! Oh!" cried Philippe joyfully, using his big voice like a bell. And the little girl was already calling from the staircase. "Agatha, set three places." Nothing pleased her so well as giving orders, except listening to stories or teasing her brother. At table she did the honors of the dinner, as if her mother were a guest. Elizabeth was amused, but not without a touch of bitterness, noting therein the result of her frequent evenings away from them. Her mind receptive, she also realized that her children, entrusted too much to the care of servants, were losing many of their good habits; the one being proud of all the luxury she enjoyed, and particularly of the Passerat's beautiful motor with which to dazzle her less-favored playfellows; the other eating with his fingers and using kitchen slang in his conversation. Little disposed to scold them, she promised herself to look after them more carefully and to begin to put them to bed herself, a fact of which little Philippe took advantage to show her all the tricks he had learned to do in his night-shirt. As soon as he was in bed, all curled up with his knees almost under his chin, the little man fell asleep, and, once asleep, he did not move any more than a trunk,--a habit for which Marie Louise took him to task. She, on the other hand, fought sleep with obstinate resistance, and only gave in at last when her eyelids could no longer keep open to see the light of the lamp. "Tell me a story," she asked when she was tucked in. Elizabeth sat down beside her and thought her being there would soothe her. "I don't know one." "Papa always knew some." She rarely spoke of her father. This remembrance astonished the young woman and was not pleasant to her. "Yes," said the little girl, "the one about Jeanne d'Arc and about Cyclops." "About Cyclops?" "Y es, the one who had only one eye in the middle of his forehead, and who let the sheep get away from him." Albert Derize had willingly pruned the forest of the epics, the Iliad, the Odyssey, the "Song of Roland" like any good woodman, to make of them playthings for his children. "Go to sleep, darling, go to sleep." "Well, I shall have to tell you one, Mamma." "You must go to sleep." "The one about the cup of happiness, if you like. There was once a knight who had a very sad wife in his castle. And she went to sleep when he was away hunting. And then he saw fairies dancing--do fairies dance?" "Of course, they do. Go to sleep." "And he saw one there who was the most beautiful of all, and she carried a golden cup with diamonds. It was not for champagne. It was the cup of happiness." Her mother bent over her, thinking she was asleep, but the little voice continued faintly after a moment. "So the knight tore it from her hands and rode off on his horse and escaped, and he made a present of it." "To whom?" Elizabeth asked mechanically. "To the lady ... who was sad in the castle ... and he went to sleep when he was hunting...."