an interest in the
business, guarantee him regular work as he did to several artists
already--in fact, one way or another, provide him with a livelihood; and
such a favour was out of the question, she considered, whether for the
one to offer or the other to accept, so small was the bond of sympathy
between the two men.

The difficulty troubled the girl's tender heart and wise brain. She saw
nothing to alarm her in a secret union with her lover and in taking the
author of nature for sole witness of their mutual troth. Her creed found
nothing blameworthy in such a union, which the independence of her mode
of life made possible and which Evariste's honourable and virtuous
character gave her good hopes of forming without apprehension as to the
result. But Gamelin was hard put to it to live and provide his old
mother with the barest necessaries, and it did not seem as though in so
straitened an existence room could well be found for an amour even when
reduced to the simplicity of nature. Moreover, Evariste had not yet
spoken and declared his intentions, though certainly the _citoyenne_
Blaise hoped to bring him to this before long.

She broke off her meditations, and the needle stopped at the same
moment.

"_Citoyen_ Evariste," she said, "I shall not care for the scarf, unless
you like it too. Draw me a pattern, please. Meanwhile, I will copy
Penelope and unravel what I have done in your absence."

He answered in a tone of sombre enthusiasm:

"I promise you I will, _citoyenne_. I will draw you the brand of the
tyrannicide Harmodius,--a sword in a wreath,"--and pulling out his
pencil, he sketched in a design of swords and flowers in the sober,
unadorned style he admired. And as he drew, he expounded his views of
art:

"A regenerated People," he declared, "must repudiate all the legacies of
servitude, bad taste, bad outline, bad drawing. Watteau, Boucher,
Fragonard worked for tyrants and for slaves. Their works show no feeling
for good style or purity of line, no love of nature or truth. Masks,
dolls, fripperies, monkey-tricks,--nothing else! Posterity will despise
their frivolous productions. In a hundred years all Watteau's pictures
will be banished to the garrets and falling to pieces from neglect; in
1893 struggling painters will be daubing their studies over Boucher's
canvases. David has opened the way; he approaches the Antique, but he
has not yet reached true simplicity, true grandeur, bare and unadorned.
Our a