furniture.  Finally, in the large and light closet, was a place for his clothes, a dressing table, and large zinc basin, with an ample supply of water.  If we compare this agreeable, salubrious, comfortable lodging, with the dark, icy, dilapidated garret, for which the worthy fellow paid ninety francs at his mother’s, and to get to which he had more than a league and a half to go every evening, we shall understand the sacrifice he made to his affection for that excellent woman.

Agricola, after casting a last glance of tolerable satisfaction at his looking-glass, while he combed his moustache and imperial, quitted his chamber, to go and join Angela in the women’s workroom.  The corridor, along which he had to pass, was broad, well-lighted from above, floored with pine, and extremely clean.  Notwithstanding some seeds of discord which had been lately sown by M. Hardy’s enemies amongst his workmen, until now so fraternally united, joyous songs were heard in almost all the apartments which skirted the corridor, and, as Agricola passed before several open doors, he exchanged a cordial good-morrow with many of his comrades.  The smith hastily descended the stairs, crossed the court yard, in which was a grass-plot planted with trees, with a fountain in the centre, and gained the other wing of the building.  There was the workroom, in which a portion of the wives and daughters of the associated artisans, who happened not to be employed in the factory, occupied themselves in making up the linen.  This labor, joined to the enormous saving effected by the purchase of the materials wholesale, reduced to an incredible extent the price of each article.  After passing through this workroom, a vast apartment looking on the garden, well-aired in summer,[29] and well-warmed in winter, Agricola knocked at the door of the rooms occupied by Angela’s mother.

If we say a few words with regard to this lodging, situated on the first story, with an eastern aspect, and also looking on the garden, it is that we may tape it as a specimen of the habitation of a family in this association, supplied at the incredibly small price of one hundred and twenty-five francs per annum.

A small entrance, opening on the corridor, led to a large room, on each side of which was a smaller chamber, destined for the family, when the boys and girls were too big to continue to sleep in the two dormitories, arranged after the fashion of a large school, and reserved for the children of both sexes.  Every night the superintendence of these dormitories was entrusted to a father and mother of a family, belonging to the association.  The lodging of which we speak, being, like all the others, disencumbered of the paraphernalia of a kitchen—­for the cooking was done in common, and on a large scale, in another part of the building—­was kept extremely clean.  A pretty large piece of carpet, a comfortable arm-chair, some pretty-looking china on a stand of well polished wood, some prints hung against the walls, a clock of