cages, and flowers in pots, and rags hung out to dry, and—if the weather was warm—by the frowzy heads of housewives greeting each other in the raucous jargon of the neighborhood "Bonjour, la p'tite mère!—et la santé, ça, colic toujours?"and then some Rabelaisian jest as one of the artisans looked up from his basement shop and joined in the conversation of the women.
At first the people of the quartier—the clock-makers and printers and metal-workers whose ancestors had plied their trade here since long before the Revolution—had wondered when the marquis had come among them, with his immaculate clothes, his silk hat with the eight high-lights, and his grave, old-fashioned manners. Some had asked him why he lived here, near the Place de Thionville, in preference to his palace of the Rue de Crenelle—to receive the never-varying reply:
"There are Corsicans here. And perhaps one of them will tell me some day!"
But years had passed, and now they were familiar with the strange habits of the marquis. They knew that every time he met one of those young, dark-haired, hawk-faced Corsicans, who came to the
