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Then, in the Paris edition of The New York Herald, the Mesdemoiselles Périvier offered a home to English and American girls desirous of studying painting in the Latin Quarter; the six-roomed flat, in the shadow of St Sulpice, being also in the neighbourhood of Julian’s and Vitti’s art schools. A few flower-pots for the flat. The half-dumb, yellow-keyed old piano repaired. Far into the night the Mesdemoiselles Périvier studied French and English grammars; at intervals during the day the elder Mademoiselle Périvier was to be heard practising feebly on the piano... against the arrival of pupils and pensionnaires.

“Saintly creatures!” repeatedly exclaimed M. le Curé in the houses he visited. Earnestly he recommended the pension. Warmly, too, was it spoken of by kindly, well-meaning people.

But it was such a sunless, cheerless place, and the Mesdemoiselles Périvier looked such dim, old-fashioned spinsters in their rusty black dresses, that the recommendations proved fruitless. After a glance at the piano and flower-pots, intending pensionnaires took their leave, and found attractive, sociable quarters chez Madame Lagrange (“widow of a diplomat”), or at the “Villa des Roses,” or the “Pension Select,” where there were “musical evenings,” five-o’clock teas, electric light, comfortable corners and gossip and laughter.