h his wife or
mistress--the concierge did not know which, nor did it matter much. The
woman had just deserted him, leaving a child of eight years. One could
expect nothing better of a creature who, according to the concierge, fed
her husband upon pork-butcher's meat, to spare herself the trouble of
getting dinner, and passed the entire day with uncombed hair, in a
dressing-sacque, reading novels, and telling her fortune with cards. The
grocer's daughter declared she had met her one evening, at a
dancing-hall, seated with a fireman before a salad-bowl full of wine,
prepared in the French fashion.

During the day Combarieu, although a red-hot Republican, sent his little
girl to the Sisters; but he went out every evening with a mysterious air
and left the child alone. The concierge even uttered in a low voice, with
the romantic admiration which that class of people have for conspirators,
the terrible word "secret society," and asserted that the printer had a
musket concealed under his straw bed.

These revelations were of a nature to excite M. Gerard's sympathy in
favor of his neighbor, for the coup d'etat and the proclamation of the
Empire had irritated him very much. Had it not been his melancholy duty
to engrave, the day after the second of December--he must feed his family
first of all--a Bonapartist allegory entitled, "The Uncle and the
Nephew," where one saw France extending its hand to Napoleon I and Prince
Louis, while soaring above the group was an eagle with spreading wings,
holding in one of his claws the cross of the Legion of Honor?

One day the engraver asked his wife, as he lighted his pipe--he had given
up Abd-el-Kader and smoked now a Barbes--if they ought not to interest
themselves a little in the abandoned child. It needed nothing more to
arouse the good woman, who had already said more than once: "What a
pity!" as she saw little Rosine waiting for her father in the lodge of
the concierge, asleep in a chair before the stove. She coaxed the child
to play with her children. Rosine was very pretty, with bright eyes, a
droll little Parisian nose, and a mass of straw-colored curly hair
escaping from her cap. The little rogue let fly quite often some gutter
expression, such as "Hang it!" or "Tol-derol-dol!" at which Madame Gerard
would exclaim, "What do I hear, Mademoiselle?" but she was intelligent
and soon corrected herself.

One Sunday morning, Combarieu, having learned of their kindness to his
child, m