The sympathies of these spectators were all with the father and the child. Helen followed like a creature in a dream. The great, silent, empty, open cathedral, with its altars all dressed in artificial lilies, and the scent of incense still in the air, came into her silent picture-gallery with all its details distinct, yet strange; and the long line of boulevard with its trees, and the white houses with their veiled windows, and the clanking of the _sabots_, and the little soldiers in the archway. They gave her no pleasure as of a novel sight, but they completed the vague, feverish world around her, so dim to her mental perception, yet keenly clear to her outward eye in the sharp blueness of the sky, the more vivid tints of an atmosphere without smoke. They went over all the town thus, mounting to the ramparts, going through all the narrow streets: Janey dancing along with her hand in her father’s, Helen following, silent, like a creature walking in her sleep, taking in all the novel scene only as a background to the pain of her soul. CHAPTER IV. The little city of Sainte-Barbe was the quaintest and most slumbrous of little French towns, and that is saying a great deal. The walls were intact and in good order, supplying the inhabitants with pleasant walks, which few people took advantage of. Their pretence at defence was antiquated and useless, but then there was nothing to defend nor any enemy intending to attack. From the ramparts you looked out upon a great plain bounded towards the north with hills, and dropping southwards into those low swelling slopes and hillocks which form the best vineyards. Sainte-Barbe was on the edge of a rich wine country verging upon the Côte d’Or; but there were no vineyards close to the town, which rose up, with its cluster of towers, its high walls and peaked roofs, out of the plain. It is to be supposed that in former days it had been a centre of more important life, for the cathedral was large enough for a metropolis, and the great town-hall, with its fine belfry, looked like one of the warlike municipalities of the middle ages. These two great buildings stood and sunned themselves, resting from whatever labours they might once have known, in a sort of dull beatitude--the one with half-a-dozen erratic worshippers coming and going, the other with three little red-legged soldiers under its grand gateway. Now and then a tourist who had heard of these buildings stopped for a few hours on his way from Italy to Paris to see them; but the fame of them was fast fading out, now that nobody thinks of posting from Paris to Dijon, and it was the rarest thing in the world to see a stranger in the streets. For the first week the townsfolk said among themselves, “Tiens! voilà les Anglais!” when Mr Goulburn and his daughters appeared; but at the end of that time became familiar with the appearance of them. It was a curious life which they led at the Lion d’Or--in a quaint discomfort,