establishment, with both hot and cold baths, stood on Rue Saint-Jacques, near the corner of Rue des Mathurins. From a long distance one could see its basins, painted a light blue as the ordinance required; and over the door were these words in huge letters:

BEARDS PROPERLY SHAVED WITHIN; HOT AND COLD BATHS

At this time the price of a bath varied from six to twelve livres [francs]; and when we consider that a livre then was worth almost three times as much as to-day, we must agree that there is a vast difference between that price and the price in our modern bathing establishments, where one obtains five tickets for three francs. The result is a great improvement in respect to health and cleanliness, for everybody cannot go to the river to bathe.

What did the poor people do in those days; for six livres was an enormous sum to them?

If, in the good old times, a bath was such an expensive luxury, on the other hand, the houses where they were supplied bore a very bad reputation; they were, it is said, places of assignation for lewd women, who, because of their rank or condition, were obliged to try to cloak their evil conduct.

Many preachers thundered from the pulpit against these places, which had been adorned with an honest name.

Maillard, in sermons noteworthy for their power and their crudity of expression, said, as he declaimed against the scandal caused by these establishments:

"Mesdames, do not go to the baths, and do not do there what I need not name!"

Sauval tells us that the baths continued their existence for a long time; people did not cease to frequent them until the end of the seventeenth century. They had become so common then that a person could hardly take a step without passing one.

Let us return to our shop on Rue Saint-Jacques. It was kept by a stout old fellow of some fifty years, as strong and bright and active as a young man, whose name was Hugonnet. He was a red-faced compère, hasty of speech and of gesture; his round, full, rubicund face exhaled health and good humor; his little round gray eyes had a slightly mischievous expression; his chin was beginning to become double, and his hair to turn gray; but Master Hugonnet worried little about that; so long as his place was well patronized, whether it was resorted to by cavaliers, bachelors, esquires, courtiers, people from the city, or even from the country, mattered little to him, if the customers paid promptly; for after a profitable day, the bath keeper rarely failed to go to the nearest wine shop, to regale and enjoy himself, whence he commonly returned home tipsy; he called it having "a little point."

The peculiar feature of Master Hugonnet's intoxication was that it totally changed his disposition; and instead of intensifying his passions and his vices, as wine so generally does, it endowed him with qualities of which no one would ever have suspected him when he was sober, and deprived him entirely of those which distinguished him in his normal condition.—For instance, the bath keeper was far from patient; he lost his temper easily, was quick to quarrel, would never give way, and was always ready to fight. To be sure, when blows had once been exchanged, Hugonnet bore his adversary no malice, and would soon be laughing and drinking with him. But in his cups the old fellow became as gentle and timid as a child; disposed to do what anyone desired, he was easily moved to compassion for the misfortunes of his neighbor; and if anyone told him some pitiful tale, it was no uncommon thing to see him weep, and disturb the neighborhood by his groans as he stumbled home. That always indicated that the libations had been copious, the bumpers frequent, and that the bath keeper was completely drunk.

Hugonnet was a widower and had but one child, a daughter, who, when our tale opens, had just reached her eighteenth year. Ambroisine was a fine girl, tall and strong, well set up and shapely. Her foot was not very small, but her calf was symmetrical and of good size; her hand might have been smaller, more tapering, but it was pink and white, and plump.

Her bearing and her gestures were somewhat brusque at times, and gave her rather too disdainful an air; but her smile was so frank and pleasant that it excused any possible rudeness in her manner to persons who did not know her well.

Ambroisine was very good-looking; her hair was as black as jet; her dark brown eyes were neither too large nor too small, and were amply fringed by long lashes of the color of her hair; she fastened them with perfect self-possession upon the person with whom she was speaking; but although they did not express the ordinary shyness of a girl of her years, they were so compassionate to the wretched, so amiable in joy, so fiery in wrath, that they were always fine eyes.

A mouth somewhat large, but well supplied with teeth, lips a little heavy, but ruddy and smiling, a round chin, a high, white forehead, and eyebrows clearly marked without being too thick—such was the daughter of Master Hugonnet, who was usually spoken of in the Quartier Saint-Jacques as La Belle Baigneuse.

Ambroisine's charms undoubtedly had much to do with the popularity of her father's establishment.

Master Hugonnet's house was never empty; it was the rendezvous of young noblemen, of the king's arquebusiers and halberdiers, of lordlings, of country squires and students, of men of the sword and men of the pen, of law clerks of the Basoche, and sometimes of a royal princess's pages.

The ladies who came to the baths—and we have already said that there were many of them—liked to be waited upon, cared for, and dressed by Ambroisine, who was quick, active, skilful, and acquitted herself of her task with a charming good humor which made it a pleasure to employ her.

It is probable that among all the young sparks and popinjays who came to Master Hugonnet's, more than one would have been equally glad to obtain the services of the daughter of the house; but they were obliged to do without them, for La Belle Baigneuse naturally was at the orders of the ladies only. Still, when there was a crowd in the barber's shop clamoring for the good offices of his razor and his comb, Ambroisine, who could shave a beard as surely and rapidly as her father, sometimes consented to lend him a hand, and to attend to the needs of one of the cavaliers who were waiting to be put in trim. The man for whom she offered to perform that service always accepted it as a favor, and strove to impart to his face a most seductive expression; and he never failed thereafter to proclaim all over the city that he had been shaved by Master Hugonnet's daughter, while everyone gazed enviously at the chin which La Belle Baigneuse had lathered.

But such opportunities were rare. Ambroisine was too much occupied with the baths to be often in her father's shop. And he loved his daughter too well ever to require her to do anything against her will. In vain did the young coxcombs, nay, even the great nobles, say to the barber:

"Shall we not see your daughter to-day, Master Hugonnet?" or: "Messire barbier, I have been awaiting my turn a long while, pray send for the fair Ambroisine to shave me"; or "By my sword! I would gladly pay double to be shaved by her!"

To all these and many other like remarks, the good-natured gossip would reply simply:

"My lords, I am in despair that I am unable to gratify you; but my daughter is engaged with some ladies who are pleased to patronize my baths. I have two young men there; but to wait on the fair sex I have only my daughter, who is sufficient for the task, because she is fortunately endowed; and because she does in a few moments the work that would take others an hour. Oh! she is a girl in a thousand, is my Ambroisine! And as for shaving you, I know that she would do that perfectly, too; she is my pupil! Such a sure, light, quick hand! Never has she cut the skin of any man's