l, somewhere or other, a
capital yielding above three thousand a year, and of which he could not
now realise a franc, the title-deeds to various investments being in the
hands of Duplessis, the most trustworthy of friends, the most upright of
men, but who was in Bretagne, and could not be got at. And the time had
come at Paris when you could not get trust for a pound of horse-flesh,
or a daily supply of fuel. And Frederic Lemercier, who had long since
spent the 2000 francs borrowed from Alain (not ignobly, but somewhat
ostentatiously, in feasting any acquaintance who wanted a feast), and
who had sold to any one who could afford to speculate on such dainty
luxuries,--clocks, bronzes, amber-mounted pipes,--all that had made the
envied garniture of his bachelor's apartment--Frederic Lemercier was,
so far as the task of keeping body and soul together, worse off than
any English pauper who can apply to the Union. Of course he might have
claimed his half-pay of thirty sous as a National Guard. But he little
knows the true Parisian who imagines a seigneur of the Chaussee d'Antin,
the oracle of those with whom he lived, and one who knew life so well
that he had preached prudence to a seigneur of the Faubourg like Alain
de Rochebriant, stooping to apply for the wages of thirty sons. Rations
were only obtained by the wonderful patience of women, who had children
to whom they were both saints and martyrs. The hours, the weary hours,
one had to wait before one could get one's place on the line for the
distribution of that atrocious black bread, defeated men,--defeated most
wives if only for husbands, were defied only by mothers and daughters.
Literally speaking, Lemercier was starving. Alain had been badly wounded
in the sortie of the 21st, and was laid up in an ambulance. Even if
he could have been got at, he had probably nothing left to bestow upon
Lemercier.

Lemercier gazed on the announcement of the bombardment, and the
Parisian gaiety, which some French historian of the siege calls douce
philosophie, lingering on him still, he said, audibly, turning round
to any stranger who heard: "Happiest of mortals that we are! Under the
present Government we are never warned of anything disagreeable that can
happen; we are only told of it when it has happened, and then as rather
pleasant than otherwise. I get up. I meet a civil gendarme. 'What is
that firing? which of our provincial armies is taking Prussia in the
rear? 'Monsieur,' says