to
grow somewhat calmer.

"But it's Charvet who must be getting bored," he said presently. "He is
waiting outside on the pavement for Clemence."

Charvet, however, now made his appearance, followed by Clemence. He was
a tall, scraggy young man, carefully shaved, with a skinny nose and
thin lips. He lived in the Rue Vavin, behind the Luxembourg, and called
himself a professor. In politics he was a disciple of Hebert.[*] He
wore his hair very long, and the collar and lapels of his threadbare
frock-coat were broadly turned back. Affecting the manner and speech of
a member of the National Convention, he would pour out such a flood of
bitter words and make such a haughty display of pedantic learning that
he generally crushed his adversaries. Gavard was afraid of him, though
he would not confess it; still, in Charvet's absence he would say that
he really went too far. Robine, for his part, expressed approval
of everything with his eyes. Logre sometimes opposed Charvet on the
question of salaries; but the other was really the autocrat of
the coterie, having the greatest fund of information and the most
overbearing manner. For more than ten years he and Clemence had lived
together as man and wife, in accordance with a previously arranged
contract, the terms of which were strictly observed by both parties to
it. Florent looked at the young woman with some little surprise, but at
last he recollected where he had previously seen her. This was at the
fish auction. She was, indeed, none other than the tall dark female
clerk whom he had observed writing with outstretched fingers, after the
manner of one who had been carefully instructed in the art of holding a
pen.

[*] Hebert, as the reader will remember, was the furious
demagogue with the foul tongue and poisoned pen who edited
the _Pere Duchesne_ at the time of the first French
Revolution. We had a revival of his politics and his journal
in Paris during the Commune of 1871.--Translator.

Rose made her appearance at the heels of the two newcomers. Without
saying a word she placed a mug of beer before Charvet and a tray before
Clemence, who in a leisurely way began to compound a glass of "grog,"
pouring some hot water over a slice of lemon, which she crushed with
her spoon, and glancing carefully at the decanter as she poured out
some rum, so as not to add more of it than a small liqueur glass could
contain.

Gavard now presented Florent to the compan