starving. Gamelin, without means to meet the expenses of a picture, to
hire a model or buy colours, abandoned his vast canvas of _The Tyrant
pursued in the Infernal Regions by the Furies_, after barely sketching
in the main outlines. It blocked up half the studio with its
half-finished, threatening shapes, greater than life-size, and its vast
brood of green snakes, each darting forth two sharp, forked tongues. In
the foreground, to the left, could be discerned Charon in his boat, a
haggard, wild-looking figure,--a powerful and well conceived design, but
of the schools, schooly. There was far more of genius and less of
artificiality in a canvas of smaller dimensions, also unfinished, that
hung in the best lighted corner of the studio. It was an Orestes whom
his sister Electra was raising in her arms on his bed of pain. The
maiden was putting back with a moving tenderness the matted hair that
hung over her brother's eyes. The head of the hero was tragic and fine,
and you could see a likeness in it to the painter's own countenance.

Gamelin cast many a mournful look at this composition; sometimes his
fingers itched with the craving to be at work on it, and his arms would
be stretched longingly towards the boldly sketched figure of Electra, to
fall back again helpless to his sides. The artist was burning with
enthusiasm, his soul aspired to great achievements. But he had to
exhaust his energy on pot-boilers which he executed indifferently,
because he was bound to please the taste of the vulgar and also because
he had no skill to impress trivial things with the seal of genius. He
drew little allegorical compositions which his comrade Desmahis engraved
cleverly enough in black or in colours and which were bought at a low
figure by a print-dealer in the Rue Honore, the _citoyen_ Blaise. But
the trade was going from bad to worse, declared Blaise, who for some
time now had declined to purchase anything.

This time, however, made inventive by necessity, Gamelin had conceived a
new and happy thought, as _he_ at any rate believed,--an idea that was
to make the print-seller's fortune, and the engraver's and his own to
boot. This was a "patriotic" pack of cards, where for the kings and
queens and knaves of the old style he meant to substitute figures of
Genius, of Liberty, of Equality and the like. He had already sketched
out all his designs, had finished several and was eager to pass on to
Desmahis such as were in a state to be engr