“Ah, the miserable!” was all the comment made upon it as the two ladies addressed their energies to the previous English.  They had never suspected him of being M. Grandissime.

Their eyes dragged slowly and ineffectually along the lines to the signature.

“H.  Grandissime!  Loog ad ’im!” cried the widow, with a sudden short laugh, that brought the tears after it like a wind-gust in a rose-tree.  She held the letter out before them as if she was lifting something alive by the back of the neck, and to intensify her scorn spoke in the hated tongue prescribed by the new courts.  “Loog ad ’im! dad ridge gen’leman oo give so mudge money to de ’ozpill!”

“Bud, maman,” said the daughter, laying her hand appeasingly upon her mother’s knee, “ee do nod know ’ow we is poor.”

“Ah!” retorted Aurore, “par example!  Non? Ee thingue we is ridge, eh?  Ligue his oncle, eh?  Ee thing so, too, eh?” She cast upon her daughter the look of burning scorn intended for Agricola Fusilier.  “You wan’ to tague the pard of dose Grandissime’?”

The daughter returned a look of agony.

“No,” she said, “bud a man wad godd some ’ouses to rend, muz ee nod boun’ to ged ’is rend?”

“Boun’ to ged—­ah! yez ee muz do ’is possible to ged ’is rend.  Oh! certain_lee_.  Ee is ridge, bud ee need a lill money, bad, bad.  Fo’ w’at?” The excited speaker rose to her feet under a sudden inspiration. “Tenez, Mademoiselle!” She began to make great show of unfastening her dress.

“Mais, comment?” demanded the suffering daughter.

“Yez!” continued Aurore, keeping up the demonstration, “you wand ’im to ’ave ‘is rend so bad!  An’ I godd honely my cloze; so you juz tague diz to you’ fine gen’lemen, ’Sieur Honore Grandissime.”

“Ah-h-h-h!” cried the martyr.

“An’ you is righd,” persisted the tormentor, still unfastening; but the daughter’s tears gushed forth, and the repentant tease threw herself upon her knees, drew her child’s head into her bosom and wept afresh.

Half an hour was passed in council; at the end of which they stood beneath their lofty mantelshelf, each with a foot on a brazen fire-dog, and no conclusion reached.

“Ah, my child!”—­they had come to themselves now and were speaking in their peculiar French—­“if we had here in these hands but the tenth part of what your papa often played away in one night without once getting angry!  But we have not.  Ah! but your father was a fine fellow; if he could have lived for you to know him!  So accomplished!  Ha, ha, ha!  I can never avoid laughing, when I remember him teaching me to speak English; I used to enrage him so!”

The daughter brought the conversation back to the subject of discussion.  There were nineteen days yet allowed them.  God knows—­by the expiration of that time they might be able to pay.  With the two music scholars whom she then had and three more whom she had some hope to get, she made bold to say they could pay the rent.