Then one day she saw in Galignani's Messenger an advertisement of an English pension for sale in the Rue Lord Byron, in the Champs Elysees quarter.
It belonged to some people named Frensham, and had enjoyed a certain popularity before the war.
The proprietor and his wife, however, had not sufficiently allowed for the vicissitudes of politics in Paris.
Instead of saving money during their popularity they had put it on the back and on the fingers of Mrs. Frensham.
The siege and the Commune had almost ruined them.
With capital they might have restored themselves to their former pride; but their capital was exhausted.
Sophia answered the advertisement.
She impressed the Frenshams, who were delighted with the prospect of dealing in business with an honest English face.
Like many English people abroad they were most strangely obsessed by the notion that they had quitted an island of honest men to live among thieves and robbers.
They always implied that dishonesty was unknown in Britain.
They offered, if she would take over the lease, to sell all their furniture and their renown for ten thousand francs.
She declined, the price seeming absurd to her.
When they asked her to name a price, she said that she preferred not to do so.
Upon entreaty, she said four thousand francs.
They then allowed her to see that they considered her to have been quite right in hesitating to name a price so ridiculous.
And their confidence in the honest English face seemed to have been shocked.
Sophia left.
When she got back to the Rue Breda she was relieved that the matter had come to nothing.
She did not precisely foresee what her future was to be, but at any rate she knew she shrank from the responsibility of the Pension Frensham.
The next morning she received a letter offering to accept six thousand.
She wrote and declined.
She was indifferent and she would not budge from four thousand.
The Frenshams gave way.
They were pained, but they gave way.
The glitter of four thousand francs in cash, and freedom, was too tempting.
Thus Sophia became the proprietress of the Pension Frensham in the cold and correct Rue Lord Byron.
She made room in it for nearly all her other furniture, so that instead of being under-furnished, as pensions usually are, it was over-furnished.
She was extremely timid at first, for the rent alone was four thousand francs a year; and the prices of the quarter were alarmingly different from those of the Rue Breda.
She lost a lot of sleep.
For some nights, after she had been installed in the Rue Lord Byron about a fortnight, she scarcely slept at all, and she ate no more than she slept.
She cut down expenditure to the very lowest, and frequently walked over to the Rue Breda to do her marketing.
With the aid of a charwoman at six sous an hour she accomplished everything.
And though clients were few, the feat was in the nature of a miracle; for Sophia had to cook.
The articles which George Augustus Sala wrote under the title
"Paris herself again" ought to have been paid for in gold by the hotel and pension-keepers of Paris.
They awakened English curiosity and the desire to witness the scene of terrible events.
Their effect was immediately noticeable.
In less than a year after her adventurous purchase, Sophia had acquired confidence, and she was employing two servants, working them very hard at low wages.
She had also acquired the landlady's manner.
She was known as Mrs. Frensham.
Across the balconies of two windows the Frenshams had left a gilded sign,
"Pension Frensham," and Sophia had not removed it.
She often explained that her name was not Frensham; but in vain.
Every visitor inevitably and persistently addressed her according to the sign.
It was past the general comprehension that the proprietress of the Pension Frensham might bear another name than Frensham.
But later there came into being a class of persons, habitues of the Pension Frensham, who knew the real name of the proprietress and were proud of knowing it, and by this knowledge were distinguished from the herd.
What struck Sophia was the astounding similarity of her guests.
They all asked the same questions, made the same exclamations, went out on the same excursions, returned with the same judgments, and exhibited the same unimpaired assurance that foreigners were really very peculiar people.
They never seemed to advance in knowledge.
There was a constant stream of explorers from England who had to be set on their way to the Louvre or the Bon Marche.