, running over a thick carpet. The door of the room opened,
turning on its well-oiled hinges. A young girl, with long blonde
tresses, made her appearance. It was Suzel Van Tricasse, the
burgomaster's only daughter. She handed her father a pipe, filled
to the brim, and a small copper brazier, spoke not a word, and
disappeared at once, making no more noise at her exit than at her
entrance.

[Illustration: She handed her father a pipe]

The worthy burgomaster lighted his pipe, and was soon hidden in a
cloud of bluish smoke, leaving Counsellor Niklausse plunged in
the most absorbing thought.

The room in which these two notable personages, charged with the
government of Quiquendone, were talking, was a parlour richly
adorned with carvings in dark wood. A lofty fireplace, in which
an oak might have been burned or an ox roasted, occupied the
whole of one of the sides of the room; opposite to it was a
trellised window, the painted glass of which toned down the
brightness of the sunbeams. In an antique frame above the
chimney-piece appeared the portrait of some worthy man,
attributed to Memling, which no doubt represented an ancestor of
the Van Tricasses, whose authentic genealogy dates back to the
fourteenth century, the period when the Flemings and Guy de
Dampierre were engaged in wars with the Emperor Rudolph of
Hapsburgh.

This parlour was the principal apartment of the burgomaster's
house, which was one of the pleasantest in Quiquendone. Built in
the Flemish style, with all the abruptness, quaintness, and
picturesqueness of Pointed architecture, it was considered one of
the most curious monuments of the town. A Carthusian convent, or
a deaf and dumb asylum, was not more silent than this mansion.
Noise had no existence there; people did not walk, but glided
about in it; they did not speak, they murmured. There was not,
however, any lack of women in the house, which, in addition to
the burgomaster Van Tricasse himself, sheltered his wife, Madame
Brigitte Van Tricasse, his daughter, Suzel Van Tricasse, and his
domestic, Lotche Jansheu. We may also mention the burgomaster's
sister, Aunt Hermance, an elderly maiden who still bore the
nickname of Tatanemance, which her niece Suzel had given her when
a child. But in spite of all these elements of discord and noise,
the burgomaster's house was as calm as a desert.

The burgomaster was some fifty years old, neither fat nor lean,
neither short nor tall, neither rubicund nor