man and
footman. Her toilets were of incomparable luxury, but likewise of
restrained and cultured taste, being usually of black velvet,
duchess-like laces, and queenly furs. She always went directly to this
old peasant-woman's handsomely-furnished rooms, and we never saw her
except as she descended from her carriage before the windows at which we
sat. She was a tall, finely-formed, aristocratic-looking brunette of
thirty-five or forty, artistically gotten up as to complexion and hair,
and always smiling affectionately at the tea-kettle old figure waiting
at the door to greet her. This aristocratic lady was known in the house
as Madame la Princesse, and was the daughter of our ancient _paysanne_
and green-grocer, whom a Slav noble had taken from a _cafe chantant_ in
Constantinople to endow with his name and fortune.

Another of our _veuves_ filled her private _salon_ with cats. There were
seven of them, and the odor of her premises was ancient and cat-like.
Three of these cats were sans eyes, sans teeth, sans everything, and had
lived with their mistress in these very rooms years before, when booming
shells sped hot over the house, and fell sometimes close beside it,
during the siege of Paris.

"How did you manage to feed them?" we asked.

"I bought slices of cat in the market and stewed them in wine," answered
Madame Pognon. "Wine and rice were the only things we were not stinted
in. Thus I could always make a ragout for Pierre, Jean, and Jacques, and
they throve on it. But I had to keep them shut up, or they would have
made ragouts instead of eaten them."

A characteristic of our Relicthood _en bloc_ was its idleness. I never
saw one of them with a piece of knitting or any other work in her hands
during all the weeks we were there. In fine weather they loitered and
basked in the garden, gossiping or amusing themselves with novelettes
cut from the penny papers and passed from one to the other in turn. The
front door stood almost always open, and the suburban neighborhood
about it was during pleasant days largely flecked by the grave gowns and
white caps belonging to our _pension_. Nearly all were Bonapartists (for
was not trade good during the Empire?) and found the present times sadly
out of joint. Nearly all had stood behind counters or at cashiers'
desks, and had thus never learned more strictly feminine employments,
and now, retired upon their _rentes_, they found time heavy upon their
hands. None were conspicuo