Montmartre as the places upon an old map of the world, marked with the
mysterious words 'Mare ignotum', would upon a savant of the Middle Ages.
There were many houses in this ancient suburb; curious old buildings,
nearly all of one story.

Sometimes they would pass a public-house painted in a sinister
wine-color; or else a garden hedged in by acacias, at the fork of two
roads, with arbors and a sign consisting of a very small windmill at the
end of a pole, turning in the fresh evening breeze. It was almost
country; the grass grew upon the sidewalks, springing up in the road
between the broken pavements. A poppy flashed here and there upon the
tops of the low walls. They met very few people; now and then some poor
person, a woman in a cap dragging along a crying child, a workman
burdened with his tools, a belated invalid, and sometimes in the middle.
of the sidewalk, in a cloud of dust, a flock of exhausted sheep, bleating
desperately, and nipped in the legs by dogs hurrying them toward the
abattoir. The father and son would walk straight ahead until it was dark
under the trees; then they would retrace their steps, the sharp air
stinging their faces. Those ancient hanging street-lamps, the tragic
lanterns of the time of the Terror, were suspended at long intervals in
the avenue, mingling their dismal twinkle with the pale gleams of the
green twilight sky.

These sorrowful promenades with his melancholy companion would commonly
end a tiresome day at Batifol's school. Amedee was now in the "seventh,"
and knew already that the phrase, "the will of God," could not be turned
into Latin by 'bonitas divina', and that the word 'cornu' was not
declinable. These long, silent hours spent at his school-desk, or beside
a person absorbed in grief, might have become fatal to the child's
disposition, had it not been for his good friends, the Gerards. He went
to see them as often as he was able, a spare hour now and then, and most
of the day on Thursdays. The engraver's house was always full of
good-nature and gayety, and Amedee felt comfortable and really happy
there.

The good Gerards, besides their Louise and Maria, to say nothing of
Amedee, whom they looked upon as one of the family, had now taken charge
of a fourth child, a little girl, named Rosine, who was precisely the
same age as their youngest.

This was the way it happened. Above the Gerards, in one of the mansards
upon the sixth floor, lived a printer named Combarieu, wit