attitude of alarm, and clutching hold of Marcel's arm
said, "Ah! Good heavens! Look there, soldiers; there is going to be
another revolution. Let us bolt off, I am awfully afraid. See me
indoors."

"But where shall we go?" asked Marcel.

"To my place," said Musette. "You shall see how nice it is. I invite you
to supper. We will talk politics."

"No," replied Marcel, who thought of Monsieur Alexis. "I will not go to
your place, despite your offer of a supper. I do not like to drink my
wine out of another's glass."

Musette was silent in face of this refusal. Then through the mist of her
recollections she saw the poor home of the artist, for Marcel had not
become a millionaire. She had an idea, and profiting by meeting another
picket she manifested fresh alarm.

"They are going to fight," she exclaimed. "I shall never dare go home.
Marcel, my dear fellow, take me to one of my lady friends, who must be
living in your neighborhood."

As they were crossing the Pont Neuf Musette broke into a laugh.

"What is it?" asked Marcel.

"Nothing," replied Musette, "only I remember that my friend has moved.
She is living at Batignolles."

On seeing Marcel and Musette arrive arm in arm Rodolphe was not
astonished.

"It is always so," said he, "with these badly buried loves."

CHAPTER XVI

The Passage of the Red Sea

For five or six years Marcel had worked at the famous painting which (he
said) represented the Passage of the Red Sea; and for five or six years,
this masterpiece of color had been obstinately refused by the jury. In
fact, by dint of going and returning so many times from the artist's
study to the Exhibition, and from the Exhibition to the study, the
picture knew the road to the Louvre well enough to have gone thither of
itself, if it had been put on wheels. Marcel, who had repainted the
canvas ten times over, from top to bottom, attributed to personal
hostility on the part of the jury the ostracism which annually repulsed
him from the large saloon; nevertheless he was not totally discouraged
by the obstinate rejection which greeted him at every Exhibition. He was
comfortably established in the persuasion that his picture was, on a
somewhat smaller scale, the pendant required by "The Marriage of Cana,"
that gigantic masterpiece whose astonishing brilliancy the dust of three
centuries has not been able to tarnish. Accordingly, every year at the
epoch of the Exhibition, Marcel sent his great work to t