always open, and the children could always
play where they liked, chase each other through the apartments or
pillage them. In the drawing-room, which had been transformed into a
work-room, the artist sat upon a high stool, point in hand; the light
from a curtainless window, sifting through the transparent paper, made
the worthy man's skull shine as he leaned over his copper plate. He
worked hard all day; with an expensive house and two girls to bring up,
it was necessary. In spite of his advanced opinions, he continued to
engrave his Prince Louis--"A rogue who is trying to juggle us out of a
Republic." At the very most, he stopped only two or three times a day to
smoke his Abu-el-Kader. Nothing distracted him from his work; not even
the little ones, who, tired of playing their piece for four hands upon
the piano, would organize, with Amedee, a game of hide-and-seek close by
their father, behind the old Empire sofa ornamented with bronze lions'
heads. But Madame Gerard, in her kitchen, where she was always cooking
something good for dinner, sometimes thought they made too great an
uproar. Then Maria, a real hoyden, in trying to catch her sister, would
push an old armchair against a Renaissance chest and make all the Rouen
crockery tremble.

"Now then, now then, children!" exclaimed Madame Gerard, from the depths
of her lair, from which escaped a delicious odor of bacon. "Let your
father have a little quiet, and go and play in the dining-room."

They obeyed; for there they could move chairs as they liked, build
houses of them, and play at making calls. Did ever anybody have such
wild ideas at five years of age as this Maria? She took the arm of
Amedee, whom she called her little husband, and went to call upon her
sister and show her her little child, a pasteboard doll with a large
head, wrapped up in a napkin.

"As you see, Madame, it is a boy."

"What do you intend to make of him when he grows up?" asked Louise, who
lent herself complacently to the play, for she was ten years old and
quite a young lady, if you please.

"Why, Madame," replied Maria, gravely, "he will be a soldier."

At that moment the engraver, who had left his bench to stretch his legs
a little and to light his Abd-el-Kader for the third time, came and
stood at the threshold of his room. Madame Gerard, reassured as to the
state of her stew, which was slowly cooking--and oh, how good it smelled
in the kitchen!--entered the dining-room. Both looked a