one knows how to spin and sweep and make bread and say one's prayers and
milk a goat or a cow, it is all a woman wants to know this side of
heaven. But for me, I cannot help it, when I look at those windows in the
cathedral, or at those beautiful twisted little spires that are all over
our Hôtel de Ville, I want to know who the men were that made them,--what
they did and thought,--how they looked and spoke,--how they learned to
shape stone into leaves and grasses like that,--how they could imagine
all those angel faces on the glass. When I go alone in the quite early
morning or at night when it is still--sometimes in winter I have to
stay till it is dark over the lace--I hear their feet come after me, and
they whisper to me close, 'Look what beautiful things we have done,
Bébée, and you all forget us quite. We did what never will die, but our
names are as dead as the stones.' And then I am so sorry for them and
ashamed. And I want to know more. Can you tell me?"

He looked at her earnestly; her eyes were shining, her cheeks were warm,
her little mouth was tremulous with eagerness.

"Did any one ever speak to you in that way?" he asked her.

"No," she answered him. "It comes into my head of itself. Sometimes I
think the cathedral angels put it there. For the angels must be tired,
you know; always pointing to God and always seeing men turn away, I used
to tell Antoine sometimes. But he used to shake his head and say that it
was no use thinking; most likely St. Gudule and St. Michael had set the
church down in the night all ready made, why not? God made the trees, and
they were more wonderful, he thought, for his part. And so perhaps they
are, but that is no answer. And I do _want_ to know. I want some one who
will tell me; and if you come out of Rubes' country as I think, no doubt
you know everything, or remember it?"