m, save Dampierre, a single man of birth and education, if only
perhaps you except Rochefort. There are plenty of Marats, but certainly
no Mirabeau.

"No, no, Cuthbert, we of the studio may be wild and thoughtless. We live
gayly and do not trouble for the morrow, but we are not altogether
fools; and even were there nothing else to unite us against the Commune,
the squalor and wretchedness, the ugliness and vice, the brutal
coarseness, and the foul language of these ruffians would band us
together as artists against them. Now, enough of Paris, what have you
been doing in England, besides recovering your health?"

"I have been recovering a fortune, too, Rene. A complicated question
concerning some property that would, in the ordinary course of things,
have come to me has now been decided in my favor."

"I congratulate you," Rene said, "but you will not give up art, I hope?"

"No, I intend to stick to that, Rene. You see I was not altogether
dependent on it before, so that circumstances are not much changed."

"You finished your pictures before you went away, did you not? The
temptation to have a peep at them has been very strong, but I have
resisted--nobly it was heroic, was it not?"

"It must have been. Yes, I put the finishing touches to them before I
went away, and now I will show them to you Rene; it is the least I can
do after all your kindness. Now go and look out of the window until I
fix the easels in a good light, I want your first impressions to be
favorable. There," after a pause, "the curtain is drawn up and the show
has begun." He spoke lightly, but there was an undertone of anxiety in
his voice. Hitherto no one but Mary had seen them, and her opinion upon
the subject of art was of little value. He, himself, believed that the
work was good, but yet felt that vague dissatisfaction and doubt whether
it might not have been a good deal better, that most artists entertain
as to their own work. In the school Rene's opinion was always sought for
eagerly; there were others who painted better, but none whose feeling of
art was more true or whose critical instinct keener.

Rene looked at the pictures for a minute or two in silence, then he
turned to Cuthbert and took one of his hands in his own. "My dear
friend," he said, "it is as I expected. I always said that you had
genius, real genius, and it is true; I congratulate you, my dear friend.
If it were not that I know you English object to be embraced, I should