into which the keepers thereof let her peep from time to time, and even handle the precious stuffs, for sake of her fair eyes.
She thought it a paradise, I say; but I—I thought wistfully, many and many a time, of our old clean, bare, wind-swept attics, with their empty walls, and their quaint lattices, and their shadowy caves, and the little ancient towns where the old belfry bells were ringing in the quiet provinces far away.
I had always been in the air, you see—in the sun and the rain, and the open weather: even when I had played, it had been under a tent, where every breeze that blew stirred the awning above my head, and made the little round coloured lamps flicker and grow brighter and duller by turns. I had led a hardy, free, open-air life, and the imprisonment of a city—even of such a city as Paris—was, in a manner, grievous to me.
Not that I ever let her think so. Oh no: it would have been very selfish. She was so content!
When I came home from the day-business of the stage at noon, I would find her always looking down into the street below, leaning her little soft face on her hands, and watching the tide of life in the café opposite. It was always full, as I said: there was a barrack hard by, and the place was
