It is after what we call Mothering Sunday--when the
prettiest little boy they can find in Paris rides through the streets
on the largest white ox. Now the lodgings whither Sir Francis and
Lady Ommaney had betaken themselves, when my mother had, so to speak,
turned them out, had a balcony with an excellent view all along the
quais, and thither the dear old lady invited Meg, Madame d'Aubepine,
and me, to bring Gaspard, with Maurice and Armantine; and I saw by
her face that the bouef gras was not all that there was for me to
see.
We went early in the day, when the streets were still not overmuch
crowded, and we climbed up, up to the fifth story, where the good old
lady contrived to make the single room her means could afford look as
dainty as her bower at home, though she swept it with her own
delicate white hands. There was an engraving of the blessed Martyr
over the chimmey-piece, the same that is in the Eikon Basilike, with
the ray of light coming down into his eye, the heavenly crown
awaiting him, the world spurned at his feet, and the weighted palm-
tree with Crescit sub pondere virtus. And Sir Francis's good old
battle-sword and pistols hung under it. It made me feel quite at
home, and we tried to make the children enter into the meaning of the
point. At least Meg did, and I think she succeeded with her son, who
had a good deal of the true Ribaumont in him, and whom they could not
spoil even by all the misrule that went on at Court whenever the
Queen was out of sight.
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