your windows. Get together, open up a subscription in order to give
to your houses and to your street a more brilliant and more artistic
appearance than the neighboring houses and streets.

Then Monsieur Patissot tried to imagine how he could give to his home an
artistic appearance.

One serious obstacle stood in the way. His only window looked out on a
courtyard, a narrow, dark shaft, where only the rats could have seen his
three Japanese lanterns.

He needed a public opening. He found it. On the first floor of his house
lived a rich man, a nobleman and a royalist, whose coachman, also a
reactionary, occupied a garret-room on the sixth floor, facing the
street. Monsieur Patissot supposed that by paying (every conscience can
be bought) he could obtain the use of the room for the day. He proposed
five francs to this citizen of the whip for the use of his room from
noon till midnight. The offer was immediately accepted.

Then he began to busy himself with the decorations. Three flags, four
lanterns, was that enough to give to this box an artistic appearance--to
express all the noble feelings of his soul? No; assuredly not! But,
notwithstanding diligent search and nightly meditation, Monsieur
Patissot could think of nothing else. He consulted his neighbors, who
were surprised at the question; he questioned his colleagues--every one
had bought lanterns and flags, some adding, for the occasion, red, white
and blue bunting.

Then he began to rack his brains for some original idea. He frequented
the cafes, questioning the patrons; they lacked imagination. Then
one morning he went out on top of an omnibus. A respectable-looking
gentleman was smoking a cigar beside him, a little farther away a
laborer was smoking his pipe upside down, near the driver two rough
fellows were joking, and clerks of every description were going to
business for three cents.

Before the stores stacks of flags were resplendent under the rising sun.
Patissot turned to his neighbor.

"It is going to be a fine celebration," he said. The gentleman looked at
him sideways and answered in a haughty manner:

"That makes no difference to me!"

"You are not going to take part in it?" asked the surprised clerk. The
other shook his head disdainfully and declared:

"They make me tired with their celebrations! Whose celebration is it?
The government's? I do not recognize this government, monsieur!"

But Patissot, as government employee, took on his