CHAPTER IX.
IN the French quarter, west of Sixth Avenue and well down Twenty-sixth Street, stands a little hotel and restaurant unknown to fame as La belle Nivernaise. It is dingy, gray with age and smoke, and the aroma of many savory dinners floats perceptibly on the air. One huge window fronts the street, adorned by a flowery balcony without, and clean white curtains within, through which may be divined, rather than seen, dozens of small tables, each bearing its white cloth, its half-yard of bread, its tapering celery-glass of graccinni (in deference to the Italian habitués), and wonderfully folded napkins foliating from portly and unbreakable goblets. The narrow steps are steep and few that lead to the door on the left of the window, and above the hospitable entrance swings a weather-beaten sign,—a rain-washed damsel, pointing with a grimacing smile to a much
