One night only for them in a large hotel in the American quarter, with the Grand Opera House before their windows, and a dozen hotels all crowded with Americans, within a quarter of a mile. Silently the sisters sit in a reception room about as large as a comfortable hall bed-room, while the student adds their names to the very long list of Americans in the register in the office, a little den just large enough for a double desk. Then a porter, once a black-haired, brawny Breton peasant in the ever-lasting blue blouse, swings a trunk upon his shoulder, gathers up in one hand all the umbrellas and bags, which it took four of us to bring, and the _concierge_, from her own little den at the foot of the staircase, hands forth our keys with a smile that is purely French and means nothing, yet says plainer than words that she has been longing all day for our coming, and is so relieved that we are safely arrived at last. Cheered by its welcome, hollow though we know it to be, we mount the easy stairs behind the Breton and the baggage. Number fifty, one, two and three, calls the clerk to a frisky chambermaid in white apron and cap, and away she goes before with her white cap-strings flying, down the corridor. Why such speed? we question, but not for long. There are four rooms, and each room has from four to six candles—candles on bureau, mantle and table, “candles to right of us, candles to left of us, candles behind us glimmered and sputtered.” With incredible celerity the white-capped maid had lighted them all. Lights are an extra in France, and when we go away to-morrow we shall find them all upon the bill, and for eighteen _bougies_ it will be our duty to pay. Americans have been found, soon after our civil war, when the spirit of strife was not yet quelled, courageous enough to resist the candle swindle, and women prudent enough to take all they paid for, and to bear them away, rolled in bits of _Galignani’s Messenger_, and tucked in with the best black silk. But the world still waits for the great spirit that shall successfully grapple the _bougie_ fraud. Our quartette, I am ashamed to say, tamely submitted, the sisters unable to get the right proportions of sweetness and light on the subject, and the brethren remarking that some games were not worth the candles, and some candles were not worth the game. Still the rather luminous exhibition of what it would be likely to cost them to dwell in this particular quarter, helped them to see their way out, and before night of the second day they answered the tender parting smile of madame, the _concierge_, each with a touching franc, and saw their luggage in a pyramid on the top of a two-seated _voiture de place_, the brethren shrunken as to knees, to the space allotted in front of their little shelf, and away they went to dine in their little cosy sitting room of an apartment far out in the suburb of Passy, beyond the city bounds, where they paid for the parlor and bed-rooms