“And how old should you suppose this lady to be?” I asked, leaning idly against the table whereon Madame Bouisse was preparing an unsavory dish of veal and garlic.

The concierge shrugged her ponderous shoulders.

“Ah, bah, M’sieur, I am no judge of age,” said she.

“Well—­is she pretty?”

“I am no judge of beauty, either,” grinned Madame Bouisse.

“But, my dear soul,” I expostulated, “you have eyes!”

“Yours are younger than mine, mon enfant,” retorted the fat concierge; “and, as I see Mam’selle Hortense coming up to the door, I’d advise you to make use of them for yourself.”

And there, sure enough, was a tall and slender girl, dressed all in black, pausing to close up her umbrella at the threshold of the outer doorway.  A porter followed her, carrying a heavy parcel.  Having deposited this in the passage, he touched his cap and stated his charge.  The young lady took out her purse, turned over the coins, shook her head, and finally came up to Madame’s little sanctuary.

“Will you be so obliging, Madame Bouisse,” she said, “as to lend me a piece of ten sous?  I have no small change left in my purse.”

How shall I describe her?  If I say that she was not particularly beautiful, I do her less than justice; for she was beautiful, with a pale, grave, serious beauty, unlike the ordinary beauty of woman.  But even this, her beauty of feature, and color, and form, was eclipsed and overborne by that “true beauty of the soul” which outshines all other, as the sun puts out the stars.

There was in her face—­or, perhaps, rather in her expression—­an indefinable something that came upon me almost like a memory.  Had I seen that face in some forgotten dream of long ago?  Brown-haired was she, and pale, with a brow “as chaste ice, as pure as snow,” and eyes—­

     “In whose orb a shadow lies,
     Like the dusk in evening skies!”

Eyes lit from within, large, clear, lustrous, with a meaning in them so profound and serious that it was almost sorrowful,—­like the eyes of Giotto’s saints and Cimabue’s Madonnas.

But I cannot describe her—­

“For oh, her looks had something excellent That wants a name!”

I can only look back upon her with “my mind’s eye,” trying to see her as I saw her then for the first time, and striving to recall my first impressions.

Madame Bouisse, meanwhile, searched in all the corners of her ample pockets, turned out her table-drawer, dived into the recesses of her husband’s empty garments, and peeped into every ornament upon the chimney-piece; but in vain.  There was no such thing as a ten-sous piece to be found.

“Pray, M’sieur Basil,” said she, “have you one?”

“One what?” I ejaculated, startled out of my reverie.

“Why, a ten-sous piece, to be sure.  Don’t you see that Mam’selle Hortense is waiting in her wet shoes, and that I have been hunting for the last five minutes, and can’t find one anywhere?”