be equal; it is
an impossibility, and, let them turn the country upside down to their
heart's content, there will still be great and small, fat and lean in
it."

As she talked, she was busy putting away the plates and dishes. The
painter had left off listening. He was thinking out a design,--for a
sansculotte, in red cap and _carmagnole_, who was to supersede the
discredited knave of spades in his pack of cards.

There was a sound of scratching on the door, and a girl appeared,--a
country wench, as broad as she was long, red-haired and bandy-legged, a
wen hiding the left eye, the right so pale a blue it looked white, with
monstrous thick lips and teeth protruding beyond them.

She asked Gamelin if he was Gamelin the painter and if he could do her a
portrait of her betrothed, Ferrand (Jules), a volunteer serving with the
Army of the Ardennes.

Gamelin replied that he would be glad to execute the portrait on the
gallant warrior's return.

But the girl insisted gently but firmly that it must be done at once.

The painter protested, smiling in spite of himself as he pointed out
that he could do nothing without the original.

The poor creature was dumfounded; she had not foreseen the difficulty.
Her head drooping over the left shoulder, her hands clasped in front of
her, she stood still and silent as if overwhelmed by her disappointment.
Touched and diverted by so much simplicity, and by way of distracting
the poor, lovesick creature's grief, the painter handed her one of the
soldiers he had drawn in water-colours and asked her if he was like
that, her sweetheart in the Ardennes.

She bent her doleful look on the sketch, and little by little her eye
brightened, sparkled, flashed, and her moon face beamed out in a radiant
smile.

"It is his very likeness," she cried at last. "It is the very spit of
Jules Ferrand, it is Jules Ferrand to the life."

Before it occurred to the artist to take the sheet of paper out of her
hands, she folded it carefully with her coarse red fingers into a tiny
square, slipped it over her heart between her stays and her shift,
handed the painter an _assignat_ for five livres, and wishing the
company a very good day, hobbled light-heartedly to the door and so out
of the room.

III

On the afternoon of the same day Evariste set out to see the _citoyen_
Jean Blaise, printseller, as well as dealer in ornamental boxes, fancy
goods and games of all sorts, in the Rue Honore, opposite