d do for a new
tenant just as she did for the others.

"I do not think," said the priest, "that monsieur is inclined to enter
our convent."

"Eh! why not?" said Monsieur Alain; "we are all well off here; we have
nothing to complain of."

"Madame," said Godefroid, rising, "I shall have the honor of calling
again to-morrow."

Though he was a young man, the four old men and Madame de la Chanterie
rose, and the vicar accompanied him to the portico. A whistle sounded.
At that signal the porter came with a lantern, guided Godefroid to the
street, and closed behind him the enormous yellow door,--ponderous as
that of a prison, and decorated with arabesque ironwork of a remote
period that was difficult to determine.

Though Godefroid got into a cabriolet, and was soon rolling into the
living, lighted, glowing regions of Paris, what he had seen still
appeared to him a dream, and his impressions, as he made his way along
the boulevard des Italiens, had already the remoteness of a memory. He
asked himself, "Shall I to-morrow find those people there?"

III. THE HOUSE OF MONGENOD

The next day, as Godefroid rose amid the appointments of modern luxury
and the choice appliances of English "comfort," he remembered the
details of his visit to that cloister of Notre-Dame, and the meaning of
the things he had seen there came into his mind. The three unknown and
silent men, whose dress, attitude, and stillness acted powerfully upon
him, were no doubt boarders like the priest. The solemnity of Madame de
la Chanterie now seemed to him a secret dignity with which she bore
some great misfortune. But still, in spite of the explanations which
Godefroid gave himself, he could not help fancying there was an air of
mystery about those sober figures.

He looked around him and selected the pieces of furniture that he would
keep, those that were indispensable to him; but when he transported them
in thought to the miserable lodging in the rue Chanoinesse, he began to
laugh at the contrast they would make there, resolving to sell all and
let Madame de la Chanterie furnish the rooms for him. He wanted a new
life, and the very sight of these objects would remind him of that which
he wished to forget. In his desire for transformation (for he belonged
to those characters who spring at a bound into the middle of a
situation, instead of advancing, as others do, step by step), he was
seized while he breakfasted with an idea,--he would turn his w