That morning there was not, as usual, a grand breakfast-party at number 32 Place Vendome. So that about one o'clock you might have seen M. Barreau's majestic paunch arrayed in white linen displaying itself at the entrance to the porch, surrounded by four or five scullions in their paper caps and as many grooms in Scotch caps,--an imposing group, which gave the sumptuous mansion the appearance of a hostelry, where the whole staff was taking a breath of fresh air between two arrivals. The resemblance was made complete by the cab stopping in front of the door and the driver lifting down an old-fashioned leather trunk, while a tall old woman in a yellow cap, an erect figure with a little green shawl over her shoulders, leaped lightly to the sidewalk, a basket on her arm, and looked carefully at the number, then approached the group of servants and asked if that was where M. Bernard Jansoulet lived. "This is the place," was the reply. "But he isn't in." "That's no matter," said the old woman, very naturally. She returned to the driver, bade him put her trunk under the porch, and paid him, at once replacing her purse in her pocket with a gesture that said much for provincial distrust. Since Jansoulet had been Deputy for Corsica, his servants had seen so many strange, foreign-looking creatures alight at his door that they were not greatly surprised at sight of that sun-burned woman, with eyes like glowing coals, bearing much resemblance in her simple head-dress to a genuine Corsican, some old psalm-singer straight from the underbrush, but distinguished from newly-arrived islanders by the ease and tranquillity of her manners. "What do you say, the master isn't in?" she said with an intonation which is much more frequently heard by the hands on a farm, on a _mas_ in her province, than by the impertinent lackeys of a great Parisian household. "No, the master isn't in." "And the children?" "They're taking their lesson. You can't see them." "And Madame?" "She's asleep. No one enters her room before three o'clock." That seemed to surprise the good woman a little, that any one could stay in bed so late; but the sure instinct which, in default of education, acts as a guide to intelligent natures, prevented her from saying so to the servants, and she at once asked to speak to Paul de Gery. "He is travelling." "Bompain Jean-Baptiste then?" "He's at the Chamber with Monsieur." Her great gray eyebrows contracted. "No matter; take my trunk upstairs all the same." And, with a malicious little twitching of the eye, a touch of pride, of vengeance for the insolent glances turned upon her, she added: "I am his mother." Scullions and grooms stood aside respectfully. M. Barreau raised his cap: "I was saying to myself that I had seen Madame somewhere." "That's just what I was saying to myself too, my boy," said Mere Jansoulet, shuddering at the memory of the ill-fated festivities in honor of the bey.