"But why is it built this way?"
"Many houses are," said the old woman with a shrug. "It's old, older
than my mother." She sat down beside them. "Soldiers have been drunk in
here many times in the war," she said. "And in the old war, too. But I
never saw one like you." She pinched Fanny's sleeve. "Fine stuff," she
said. "The Americans are rich!"
"I'm not American."
"Rich they are. But I don't care for them. They have no real feeling for
a woman. You are not stupid, _ma belle_, to get a Frenchman for a lover."
"Don't make him vain."
"It is the truth. He knows it very well. Why should he be vain? An
American loves a pretty face; but a Frenchman loves what is a woman."
She rose and lifted the lamp, and let its ray search out a corner of the
room wherein the great bed stood, wooden and square, its posts black
with age, its bedding puffed about it and crowned with a scarlet
eiderdown as solid and deep as the bed itself.
"A fine bed; an old bed; it is possible that you will not believe me,
but I shared that bed with a bishop not two years ago."
Fanny's eyes were riveted on the bed.
Julien laughed. "In the worst sense, mother?"
"In the best, my son," bragged the old woman, sliding a skinny finger to
the tip of her nose. "You don't believe me?"
Coming nearer, she stood with the lamp held in her two hands resting on
the table, so that she towered over them in fluttering shawl and shadow.
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