, and had then procured the _citoyen_
Montfort's pardon, who was no sooner at liberty than he started his old
trade of provisioning the troops, to which he added speculation in
building-lots in the Pepiniere quarter. The architects Ledoux, Olivier
and Wailly were erecting pretty houses in that district, and in three
months the land had trebled in value. Montfort, since their imprisonment
together in the Luxembourg, had been Rose Thevenin's lover; he now gave
her a little house in the neighbourhood of Tivoli and the Rue du Rocher,
which was very expensive,--and cost him nothing, the sale of the
adjacent properties having already repaid him several times over. Jean
Blaise was a man of the world, so he deemed it best to put up with what
he could not hinder; he gave up Mademoiselle Thevenin to Montfort
without ceasing to be on friendly terms with her.

Julie had not been long at the _Amour peintre_ before Elodie came down
to her in the shop, looking like a fashion plate. Under her mantle,
despite the rigours of the season, she wore nothing but her white frock;
her face was even paler than of old, and her figure thinner; her looks
were languishing, and her whole person breathed voluptuous invitation.

The two women set off for Rose Thevenin's, who was expecting them.
Desmahis accompanied them; the actress was consulting him about the
decoration of her new house and he was in love with Elodie, who had by
this time half made up her mind to let him sigh no more in vain. When
the party came near Monceaux, where the victims of the Place de la
Revolution lay buried under a layer of lime:

"It is all very well in the cold weather," remarked Julie; "but in the
spring the exhalations from the ground there will poison half the town."

Rose Thevenin received her two friends in a drawing-room furnished _a
l'antique_, the sofas and armchairs of which were designed by David.
Roman bas-reliefs, copied in monochrome, adorned the walls above
statues, busts and candelabra of imitation bronze. She wore a curled wig
of a straw colour. At that date wigs were all the rage; it was quite
common to include half a dozen, a dozen, a dozen and a half in a bride's
trousseau. A gown _a la Cyprienne_ moulded her body like a sheath.
Throwing a cloak over her shoulders, she led her two friends and the
engraver into the garden, which Ledoux was laying out for her, but which
as yet was a chaos of leafless trees and plaster. She showed them,
however, Fingal