day, mother dear?"

Evariste hung up his hat on its peg, changed his blue coat for a working
jacket and sat down before his easel. For some days he had been working
at a sketch in charcoal of a Victory laying a wreath on the brow of a
dead soldier, who had died for the fatherland. Once the subject would
have called out all his enthusiasm, but the Tribunal consumed all his
days and absorbed his whole soul, while his hand had lost its knack from
disuse and had grown heavy and inert.

He hummed over the _Ca ira_.

"I hear you singing," said the _citoyenne_ Gamelin; "you are
light-hearted, Evariste?"

"We have reason to be glad, mother; there is good news. La Vendee is
crushed, the Austrians beaten, the Army of the Rhine has forced the
lines of Lautern and of Wissembourg. The day is at hand when the
Republic triumphant will show her clemency. Why must the conspirators'
audacity increase the mightier the Republic waxes in strength, and
traitors plot to strike the fatherland a blow in the dark at the very
moment her lightnings overwhelm the enemies that assail her openly?"

The _citoyenne_ Gamelin, as she sat knitting a stocking, was watching
her son's face over her spectacles.

"Berzelius, your old model, has been to ask for the ten livres you owed
him; I paid him. Little Josephine has had a belly-ache from eating too
much of the preserves the carpenter gave her. So I made her a drop of
herb tea.... Desmahis has been to see you; he was sorry he did not find
you in. He wanted to engrave a design by you. He thinks you have great
talent. He is a fine fellow; he looked at your sketches and admired
them."

"When peace is re-established and conspiracy suppressed," said the
painter, "I shall begin on my Orestes again. It is not my way to flatter
myself; but that head is worthy of David's brush."

He outlined with a majestic sweep the arm of his Victory.

"She holds out palms," he said. "But it would be finer if her arms
themselves were palms."

"Evariste!"

"Mother?"

"I have had news ... guess, of whom...."

"I do not know."

"Of Julie ... of your sister.... She is not happy."

"It would be a scandal if she were."

"Do not speak so, my son, she is your sister. Julie is not a bad woman;
she had a good disposition, which misfortune has developed. She loves
you. I can assure you, Evariste, that she only desires a hard-working,
exemplary life and her fondest wish is to be reconciled to her friends.
There is nothi