“If you will permit it, my dear friend, I should like the young couple to live in my house,” said M. Maubars. “It is, I may say, without vanity, one of the most comfortable and best furnished in the town. As to me, you know, I am becoming a monk, or a bear, or a house-rat. The rolling of the half-dozen coaches and the three or four cabs our town possesses is sufficient to trouble my digestion, and almost deafens me; so I think, in order to plant my cabbages in peace, I had better lodge in the pavilion of my large garden at Vaux, which is not more than a league from the town. My good old Baptistine will accompany me, and keep the pot boiling. Every evening the children can come and see me, that is, every fine evening; and you can have them right by you--nothing to do but cross the street, and walk a few steps on the quay, ring the little bell, the latch will fly up, and there will be Valentine in a clean dress and red ribbon coming to meet you, for her delicate hearing would distinguish your step among a thousand others on the same pavement.” “Poor dear child! I don’t want to be selfish, and yet it is hard to part with her,” murmured Madame de Guers, while stifling a sigh. “Do you call that parting with her, when I tell you she will be right under your eye? And then, my dear friend, I must tell you you have become very worldly of late. You are obliged to accompany Valentine to this and that soirée, and it fatigues you, absorbs and puts you out altogether. When it comes my Alfred’s turn to do all this for her, you will see how you will improve, and old ladies always recover so naturally. Confess it, my dear Madame de Guers, have you not for some time been very negligent of yourself and your old people?” “Alas, yes! poor good old people!” replied the respectable lady, with a sweet smile. “Yet every morning, after Mass, I stop to see them. True, my child monopolizes much of the time I should give to them, but she loves them too: she has so excellent a heart! How often I have seen her, when quite a child, take from her weekly allowance to buy jujube for old Manou, who has catarrh so badly, and tobacco for Périne, whose happiness is in smoking! And how she takes care of them when necessary, my friend! How merry she makes them, and consoles them, and reads them good books, and the Scripture she explains so prettily! In truth, this humble work will not perish with me: I have some one to whom I can confide it.”