of you,
_citoyen_ Gamelin."

"You think he is like me?" exclaimed the painter, with a grave smile.

She took the chair Gamelin offered her. The young dragoon stood beside
her, his hand on the back of the chair on which she sat. Which showed
plainly that the Revolution was an accomplished fact, for under the
ancien regime, no man would ever, in company, have touched so much as
with the tip of a finger, the seat occupied by a lady. In those days a
gentleman was trained and broken in to the laws of politeness, sometimes
pretty hard laws, and taught to understand that a scrupulous
self-restraint in public places gives a peculiar zest to the sweet
familiarity of the boudoir, and that to lose your respectful awe of a
woman, you must first have that feeling.

Louise Masche de Rochemaure, daughter of a Lieutenant of the King's
Hunt, widow of a Procureur and, for twenty years, the faithful mistress
of the financier Brotteaux des Ilettes, had fallen in with the new
ideas. She was to be seen, in July, 1790, digging the soil of the Champ
de Mars. Her strong inclination to side with the powers that be had
carried her readily enough along a political path that started with the
Feuillants and led by way of the Girondins to end on the summit of _the
Mountain_, while at the same time a spirit of compromise, a passion for
conversion and a certain aptitude for intrigue still attached her to the
aristocratic and anti-revolutionary party. She was to be met
everywhere,--at coffee houses and theatres, fashionable restaurants,
gaming-saloons, drawing-rooms, newspaper offices and ante-chambers of
Committees. The Revolution yielded her a hundred satisfactions,--novelty
and amusement, smiles and pleasures, business ventures and profitable
speculations. Combining political with amorous intrigue, playing the
harp, drawing landscapes, singing ballads, dancing Greek dances, giving
supper parties, entertaining pretty women, such as the Comtesse de
Beaufort and the actress Mademoiselle Descoings, presiding all night
long over a _trente-et-un_ or _biribi_ table and an adept at _rouge et
noir_, she still found time to be charitable to her friends. Inquisitive
and interfering, giddy-pated and frivolous, she understood men but knew
nothing of the masses; as indifferent to the creed she professed as to
the opinions she felt bound to repudiate, understanding nothing whatever
of all that was happening in the country, she was enterprising,
intrepid, and fu