At table she did the honors of the dinner, as if her mother were a guest. Elizabeth was amused, but not without a touch of bitterness, noting therein the result of her frequent evenings away from them. Her mind receptive, she also realized that her children, entrusted too much to the care of servants, were losing many of their good habits; the one being proud of all the luxury she enjoyed, and particularly of the Passerat's beautiful motor with which to dazzle her less-favored playfellows; the other eating with his fingers and using kitchen slang in his conversation. Little disposed to scold them, she promised herself to look after them more carefully and to begin to put them to bed herself, a fact of which little Philippe took advantage to show her all the tricks he had learned to do in his night-shirt.
As soon as he was in bed, all curled up with his knees almost under his chin, the little man fell asleep, and, once asleep, he did not move any more than a trunk,—a habit for which Marie Louise took him to task. She, on the other hand, fought sleep with obstinate resistance, and only gave in at last when her eyelids could no longer keep open to see the light of the lamp.
"Tell me a story," she asked when she was tucked in.
Elizabeth sat down beside her and thought her being there would soothe her.
"I don't know one."
"Papa always knew some."
She rarely spoke of her father. This remembrance astonished the young woman and was not pleasant to her.
"Yes," said the little girl, "the one about Jeanne d'Arc and about Cyclops."
"About Cyclops?"
"Y es, the one who had only one eye in the middle of his forehead, and who let the sheep get away from him."