The long side of the room, opposite the door, has four tall windows that look across a garden, with untrimmed yew-trees and box edges, over green paths, tangles of grass and flowers, to what used to be conventual buildings and the nuns' orchard.
The little altar is at the end of the room on the left as you come in, facing the windows.
There is a statue of Notre Dame des Victoires and a statue of Saint Jeanne d'Arc, and there is the Cross between them. There are two seven-branched old bronze candlesticks. The altar is spread with "a fine white cloth."
On the floor before it is laid something covered with the flag of the Republic.
I know what it is that the flag covers.
She had showed it to me.
One day, I don't know why, she took me there and lifted the flag, and showed me a heap of toys.
She said, "They were babies when they died." "They died;" she said, "the two of them in one week together, of a fever. It was in the year that we called, till now, the 'Terrible Year.' It was in the month of the battle in which their father was killed." She said, "Look at the wooden soldiers of my babies, the Hussars and the Imperial Guards. How long ago! And this was a little model of the cannon of those days. Look at the bigger one's musket and the little one's trumpet and drum. And the little uniforms of the Empire I had made for them, and they were so proud of—My sons, to whom it was not given to die for France."