f young libertines would strike up the
_Ca-ira_ in chorus, regardless of the protests of an old Jacobin, highly
indignant to see a dirty meaning attached to a refrain expressive of the
Republican faith in a future of justice and happiness.

His ladder under his arm, a billsticker appeared to post up on a blank
wall facing the baker's a proclamation by the Commune apportioning the
rations of butcher's-meat. Passers-by halted to read the notice, still
sticky with paste. A cabbage vendor going by, basket on back, began
calling out in her loud cracked voice:

"They'm all gone, the purty oxen! best rake up the guts!"

Suddenly such an appalling stench of putrefaction rose from a sewer near
by that several people were turned sick; a woman was taken ill and
handed over in a fainting condition to a couple of National Guards, who
carried her off to a pump a few yards away. All held their noses, and
fell to growling and grumbling, exchanging conjectures each more ghastly
and alarming than the last. What was it? a dead animal buried
thereabouts, a dead fish, perhaps, put in for mischief's sake, or more
likely a victim of the September massacres, some noble or priest, left
to rot in a cellar.

"They buried them in cellars, eh?"

"They got rid of 'em anywhere and anyhow."

"It will be one of the Chatelet prisoners. On the 2nd I saw three
hundred in a heap on the Port au Change."

The Parisians dreaded the vengeance of these aristocrats who were like
to poison them with their dead bodies.

Evariste Gamelin joined the line; he was resolved to spare his old
mother the fatigues of the long wait. His neighbour, the _citoyen_
Brotteaux, went with him, calm and smiling, his Lucretius in the baggy
pocket of his plum-coloured coat.

The good old fellow enjoyed the scene, calling it a bit of low life
worthy the brush of a modern Teniers.

"These street-porters and goodwives," he declared, "are more amusing
than the Greeks and Romans our painters are so fond of nowadays. For my
part, I have always admired the Flemish style."

One fact he was too sensible and tactful to mention--that he had
himself owned a gallery of Dutch masters rivalled only by Monsieur de
Choiseul's in the number and excellence of the examples.

"Nothing is beautiful save the Antique," returned the painter, "and what
is inspired by it. Still, I grant you these low-life scenes by Teniers,
Jan Steen or Ostade are better stuff than the frills and furbelows of
Wa