is plate before the curtainless
window on a winter's day. It snows in the streets, and large white flakes
are slowly falling behind the glass; but the room, ornamented with
pictures and busts, is lighted and heated by a bright coke fire. Amedee
can see himself seated in a corner by the fire, learning by heart a page
of the "Epitome" which he must recite the next morning at M. Batifol's.
Maria and Rosine are crouched at his feet, with a box of glass beads,
which they are stringing into a necklace. It was comfortable; the whole
apartment smelled of the engraver's pipe, and in the dining-room, whose
door is half opened, Louise is at the piano, singing, in a fresh voice,
some lines where "Castilla" rhymes with "mantilla," and "Andalousie" with
"jealousy," while her agile fingers played on the old instrument an
accompaniment supposed to imitate bells and castanets.

Or perhaps it is a radiant morning in June, and they are in the
dining-room; the balcony door is open wide, and a large hornet buzzes
loudly in the vine. Louise is still at the piano; she is singing this
time, and trying to reach the low tones of a dramatic romance where a
Corsican child is urged on to vengeance by his father:

Tiens, prends ma carabiue!
Sur toi veillera Dieu--

This is a great day, the day when Mamma Gerard makes her gooseberry
preserves. There is a large basin already full of it on the table. What a
delicious odor! A perfume of roses mingled with that of warm sugar. Maria
and Rosine have just slipped into the kitchen, the gourmands! But Louise
is a serious person, and will not interrupt her singing for such a
trifle. She continues to sing in a low voice: and at the moment when
Amedee stands speechless with admiration before her, as she is scolding
in a terrible tone and playing dreadful chords, to and behold! here come
the children, both with pink moustaches, and licking their lips
voluptuously.

Ah! these were happy hours to Amedee. They consoled him for the
interminable days at M. Batifol's.

Having passed the ninth preparatory grade, under the direction of the
indolent M. Tavernier, always busy polishing his nails, like a Chinese
mandarin, the child had for a professor in the eighth grade Pere
Montandeuil, a poor fellow stupefied by thirty years of teaching, who
secretly employed all his spare hours in composing five-act tragedies,
and who, by dint of carrying to and going for his manuscripts at the
Odeon, ended by