situated in front of
Val-de-Grace, where he had formed the habit of going. Then he would
return to his garret, and relight his stove and lamp, and work until
midnight. This ardent, continuous effort, this will-tension kept in his
mind the warmth, animation, and excitement indispensable for poetical
production. His mind expanded rapidly, ready to receive the germs that
were blown to him by the mysterious winds of inspiration. At times he was
astonished to see his pen fill the sheet so rapidly that he would stop,
filled with pride at having thus reduced to obedience words and rhythms,
and would ask himself what supernatural power had permitted him to arm
these divine wild birds.

On Sundays, he had his meals brought him by the concierge, working all
day and not going out until nearly five o'clock in the afternoon, to dine
with Mamma Gerard. It was the only distraction that he allowed himself,
or rather the only recompense that he permitted himself. He walked
halfway across Paris to buy a cake in the Rue Fontaine for their dessert;
then he climbed without fatigue, thanks to his young legs, to the top of
Montmartre, lighted by swinging lamps, where one could almost believe
one's self in the distant corner of some province. They would be waiting
for him to serve the soup, and the young man would seat himself between
the widow and the two orphans.

Alas, how hard these poor ladies' lives had become! Damourette, a member
of the Institute, remembered that he had once joked in the studios with
Gerard, and obtained a small annual pension for the widow; but it was
charity--hardly enough to pay the rent. Fortunately Louise, who already
looked like an old maid at twenty-three, going about the city all day
with her roll of music under her black shawl, had many pupils, and more
than twenty houses had well-nigh become uninhabitable through her
exertions with little girls, whose red hands made an unendurable racket
with their chromatic scales. Louise's earnings constituted the surest
part of their revenue. What a strange paradox is the social life in large
cities, where Weber's Last Waltz will bring the price of a four-pound
loaf of bread, and one pays the grocer with the proceeds of Boccherini's
Minuet!

In spite of all, they had hard work to make both ends meet at the
Gerards. The pretty Maria wished to make herself useful and aid her
mother and sister. She had always shown great taste for drawing, and her
father used to give her