Another effect of his easy situation in life was, that he had time to perform those necessary ablutions too much required by the faces and hands of all blacksmiths, but which, alas! all blacksmiths are but too apt to neglect. It is true that, had he washed his face and hands for ever, or, after the prescribed rule of the Arabian Nights, had scoured them "forty times with alkali, and forty times with the ashes of the same plant," his face and hands would still have retained a certain glowing coppery brown hue, which they had acquired by the action of sun, and air, and fire, and hard work, and which they likewise possessed, it must be confessed, in some degree from nature. At the table with Paul Virlay were three other personages. The first was his daughter, a sweet little girl of thirteen or fourteen years of age, and the second his wife, a goodly dame, perhaps two years or three years older than himself, and who, being terribly marked with the smallpox, had never possessed any beauty. Thus, at his marriage, Virlay, who had been in much request amongst the young ladies of Morseiul, declared that he had taken the good working horse instead of the jennet. She had always been extremely careful, laborious, active, and economical; somewhat given to smartness of apparel, indeed, but by no means to extravagance, and though decorating herself with black velvet riband, and large ornaments of gold, yet careful that the riband was not worn out too soon, and the gold ornaments neither bruised nor broken.