"Franzius was in bed and asleep when we got there. I led Flandrin right up to the attic; and you may imagine Franzius's feelings when he woke up and found us in his room--the best music-publisher in Paris standing at the foot of his bed waiting to offer him a thousand francs for his 'Lieder'! A thousand francs down! Oh, there is nothing like money! It was just as if I had opened a window in his life and let in spring. I saw him grow younger under my eyes as he sat up in bed unconscious of everything but the great idea that luck had come at last and some hand had opened the door of his cage. Even old Flandrin was a bit moved, I think. Ah, well! I bundled Flandrin off when the business was done, and then I made Franzius write a note to the Closerie de Lilas people, telling them that at the end of the week he was leaving there, and then I told him my plan. You know old Fauchard, the forest-keeper's cottage? It's only half a mile from here; it's right in the forest. Well, he has a room to spare, and he will put Franzius up for twelve francs a week. He will be free to write his music----" "Ah, Toto," cried Eloise, who had been trying to in a word for the last two minutes, "how good of you!" "Good of me! Why, I have only done what pleased myself! It's a debt. The man saved my life--but no matter about that. Get your hat and come with me, and we will go to Fauchard's and make arrangements about the room." CHAPTER XXVI THE TURRET ROOM Fauchard, the ranger's, cottage lay at the meeting of two drives; all the trees here were pines, and the air was filled with their balsam. It was, even in 1869, an old-fashioned cottage, set back in a clearing amidst the trees. The tall pines seemed to have stepped back to give it room, and were eternally blowing their compliments to it. Ah, they were fine fellows to live amongst, those pine-trees, true noblemen of the forest, erect as grenadiers, spruce, perfumed; and the blue sky looked never so beautiful as when seen over their tops. The cottage had an old wooden gallery under the upper windows, and an outside staircase gone to decay; the porch was covered with rambler roses; on the apex of the red-tiled roof pigeons white as pearls sat in strings, fluttering now to the ground, and now circling in the blue above the trees like a ring of smoke. It was a place wherein to taste the beauty of summer to the very dregs. Dawn, coming down the pine-set drive, touching the branches with her fingers and setting the woods a-shiver, peeped into Fauchard's cottage as she never peeped into the Tuileries. Noon sat with folded hands before the rose-strewn porch, singing to herself a song which mortals heard in the croonings of the pigeons. Dusk set glow-worms, like little lamps, amidst the roses of the porch.