r be despondent.

"You see, Madame Violette, it is this horrible, endless winter. It is
almost March now; they are already selling boxes of primroses in little
carts on the sidewalks. You will surely be better as soon as the sun
shines. If you like, I will take little Amedee back with me to play with
my little girls. It will amuse the child."

So it happened that the good neighbor kept the child every afternoon, and
he became very fond of the little Gerard children.

Four little rooms, that is all; but with a quantity of old, picturesque
furniture; engravings, casts, and pictures painted by comrades were on
the walls; the doors were always open, and the children could always play
where they liked, chase each other through the apartments or pillage
them. In the drawing-room, which had been transformed into a work-room,
the artist sat upon a high stool, point in hand; the light from a
curtainless window, sifting through the transparent paper, made the
worthy man's skull shine as he leaned over his copper plate. He worked
hard all day; with an expensive house and two girls to bring up, it was
necessary. In spite of his advanced opinions, he continued to engrave his
Prince Louis--"A rogue who is trying to juggle us out of a Republic." At
the very most, he stopped only two or three times a day to smoke his
Abu-el-Kader. Nothing distracted him from his work; not even the little
ones, who, tired of playing their piece for four hands upon the piano,
would organize, with Amedee, a game of hide-and-seek close by their
father, behind the old Empire sofa ornamented with bronze lions' heads.
But Madame Gerard, in her kitchen, where she was always cooking something
good for dinner, sometimes thought they made too great an uproar. Then
Maria, a real hoyden, in trying to catch her sister, would push an old
armchair against a Renaissance chest and make all the Rouen crockery
tremble.

"Now then, now then, children!" exclaimed Madame Gerard, from the depths
of her lair, from which escaped a delicious odor of bacon. "Let your
father have a little quiet, and go and play in the dining-room."

They obeyed; for there they could move chairs as they liked, build houses
of them, and play at making calls. Did ever anybody have such wild ideas
at five years of age as this Maria? She took the arm of Amedee, whom she
called her little husband, and went to call upon her sister and show her
her little child, a pasteboard doll with a large head, wr