The
friendliness of the photographer with his neighbours sufficiently
authorized these communications like those of prisoners. But what did
they mean? How reply to what seemed a call? Quite at hazard, he repeated
the two strokes, the light tapping, and the conversation ended there. On
the return of Andre Maranne he learned the explanation of the incident.
It was very simple. Sometimes, in the course of the day, the young
ladies below, who only saw their neighbour in the evening, would inquire
how things were going with him, whether any clients were coming in. The
signal he had heard meant, "Is business good to-day?" And M. Joyeuse had
replied, obeying only an instinct without any knowledge, "Fairly well
for the season." Although young Maranne was very red as he made this
affirmation, M. Joyeuse accepted his word at once. Only this idea of
frequent communications between the two households made him afraid for
the secrecy of his position, and from that time forward he cut himself
off from what he used to call his "artistic days." Moreover, the
moment was approaching when he would no longer be able to conceal his
misfortune, the end of the month arriving, complicated by the ending of
the year.

Paris was already assuming the holiday appearance which it wears during
the last weeks of December. In the way of national or popular rejoicing
it had little left but that. The follies of the Carnival died with
Gavarni, the religious festivals with their peals of bells which one
scarcely hears amid the noise of the streets confine themselves within
their heavy church-doors, the 15th of August has never been anything but
the Saint Charles-the-Great of the barracks; but Paris has maintained
its observance of New Year's Day.

From the beginning of December an immense childishness begins to
permeate the town. You see hand-carts pass laden with gilded drums,
wooden horses, playthings by the dozen. In the industrial quarters, from
top to bottom of the five-storied houses, the old private residences
still standing in that low-lying district, where the warehouses have
such lofty ceilings and majestic double doors, the nights are passed in
the making up of gauze flowers and spangles, in the gumming of labels
upon satin-lined boxes, in sorting, marking, packing, the thousand
details of the toy, that great branch of commerce on which Paris places
the seal of its elegance. There is a smell about of new wood, of fresh
paint, glossy varnish, an