He turned, beckoned to someone, and his wife reappeared.

How handsome she was! They both stood side by side, looking at her earnestly and sadly.
For four hundred years, the line of Huberts, embroiderers from father to son, had lived in this house.

A noted maker of chasubles had built it under Louis XI, another had repaired it under Louis XIV, and the Hubert who now occupied it still embroidered church vestments, as his ancestors had always done.

At twenty years of age he had fallen in love with a young girl of sixteen, Hubertine, and so deep was their affection for each other, that when her mother, widow of a magistrate, refused to give her consent to their union, they ran away together and were married.

She was remarkably beautiful, and that was their whole romance, their joy, and their misfortune.
When, a year later, she went to the deathbed of her mother, the latter disinherited her and gave her her curse.