"Rue St. Père."
"Near Hôtel St. Père?"
"Not far from that, madame. My father makes wooden images; perhaps you pass his window. At least I call him my father."
I had often passed his window, filled with a melancholy collection of well-carved animals, boxes, heads, quite yellow by exposure. Nothing seemed ever to be sold.
One day I went in to ask the price of a stag's head. The poor man, broken down by sickness, sat whittling in the corner. His face was like saffron, while his thin hair was black as jet. A heavy curtain was hung across the shop. Presently the rings that supported it rattled a little; the curtain opened midway, revealing a bit of French home life. A cradle of an antique pattern, a woman ironing at a table, a tiny stove, two windows full of flowers, everything poverty-stricken but clean. As I was paying for the stag's head in came my little one of St. Sulpice. She knew me, but with only a nod and a smile passed into the other part of the room.
"That is your little girl, I suppose," I said.
"Oh, no; I care for her; that is all. Her mother is dead; she is no kin to me, but one cannot see a little one suffer. Besides, she does very well with her voice; she will work her way in the world. We do not suffer; we have bread." Nevertheless I knew by his voice and the aspect of things that they did suffer sometimes, so I often made little expeditions that way, and spent for carved wood every franc I could spare.
Now comes the wonderful part of my story. I had been at home six months when the French war broke out. While reading the dreadful tidings, and seeing with my mind's eye those fairy-like palaces, over which I had wandered so often, sacked and destroyed, I thought of the little girl of St. Sulpice, and wondered what had become of her. Where were the wooden hounds with their life-like eyes, the stags' heads so beautifully carved, the long, French faces with the dust lying in their grotesque goatees? Where were the sick old man, the tidy little mother, the large, rosy baby?
One day, only a very few weeks ago, while walking down Pennsylvania Avenue, in Washington, a splendid carriage drove past, and I caught a glimpse of a face that set my heart beating. I turned to look, and, strange to tell, the child was also turning to look at me. Could this be the little French girl of St. Sulpice? Impossible.
On the following day I was called into my sitting-room to see some one who wanted a donation.