! sir, how fragrant your chestnut soup smells! It takes
me back to the table where my mother sat smiling, surrounded by her
troop of little ones."

The repast ended, Brotteaux set out for Joly's, the toy-merchant in the
Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, who took the dancing-dolls Caillou had
refused, and ordered--not another gross of them like the latter, but a
round twenty-four dozen to begin with.

On reaching the erstwhile Rue Royale and turning into the Place de la
Revolution, Brotteaux caught sight of a steel triangle glittering
between two wooden uprights; it was the guillotine. An immense crowd of
light-hearted spectators pressed round the scaffold, waiting the arrival
of the loaded carts. Women were hawking Nanterre cakes on a tray hung in
front of them and crying their wares; sellers of cooling drinks were
tinkling their little bells; at the foot of the Statue of Liberty an old
man had a peep-show in a small booth surmounted by a swing on which a
monkey played its antics. Underneath the scaffold some dogs were licking
yesterday's blood, Brotteaux turned back towards the Rue Honore.

Regaining his garret, where the Barnabite was reading his breviary, he
carefully wiped the table and arranged his colour-box on it alongside
the materials and tools of his trade.

"Father," he said, "if you do not deem the occupation unworthy of the
sacred character with which you are invested, I will ask you to help me
make my marionettes. A worthy tradesman, Joly by name, has this very
morning given me a pretty heavy order. Whilst I am painting these
figures already put together, you will do me a great service by cutting
out heads, arms, legs, and bodies from the patterns here. Better you
could not find; they are after Watteau and Boucher."

"I agree with you, sir," replied Longuemare, "that Watteau and Boucher
were well fitted to create such-like baubles; it had been more to their
glory if they had confined themselves to innocent figures like these. I
should be delighted to help you, but I fear I may not be clever enough
for that."

The Pere Longuemare was right to distrust his own skill; after sundry
unsuccessful attempts, the fact was patent that his genius did not lie
in the direction of cutting out pretty shapes in thin cardboard with the
point of a penknife. But when, at his suggestion, Brotteaux gave him
some string and a bodkin, he showed himself very apt in endowing with
motion the little creatures he had failed to make