res
and statuettes for the trade.

Little figures and statuettes! That is what we had come to. Trade had
supplanted the State. How empty is history, how poor is art; inasmuch as
there are no more big figures there are no more statues.

Antonin Moyne made rather a poor living out of his work. He had,
however, been able to give his son Paul a good education and had got him
into the Ecole Polytechnique. Towards 1847 the art-work business being
already bad, he had added to his little figures portraits in pastel.
With a statuette here, and a portrait there, he managed to get along.

After February the art-work business came to a complete standstill. The
manufacturer who wanted a model for a candlestick or a clock, and
the bourgeois who wanted a portrait, failed him. What was to be done?
Antonin Moyne struggled on as best he could, used his old clothes, lived
upon beans and potatoes, sold his knick-knacks to bric-a-brac dealers,
pawned first his watch, then his silverware.

He lived in a little apartment in the Rue de Boursault, at No. 8, I
think, at the corner of the Rue Labruyere.

The little apartment gradually became bare.

After June, Antonin Moyne solicited an order of the Government. The
matter dragged along for six months. Three or four Cabinets succeeded
each other and Louis Bonaparte had time to be nominated President. At
length M. Leon Faucher gave Antonin Moyne an order for a bust, upon
which the statuary would be able to make 600 francs. But he was informed
that, the State funds being low, the bust would not be paid for until it
was finished.

Distress came and hope went.

Antonin Moyne said one day to his wife, who was still young, having
been married to him when she was only fifteen years old: "I will kill
myself."

The next day his wife found a loaded pistol under a piece of furniture.
She took it and hid it. It appears that Antonin Moyne found it again.

His reason no doubt began to give way. He always carried a bludgeon and
razor about with him. One day he said to his wife: "It is easy to kill
one's self with blows of a hammer."

On one occasion he rose and opened the window with such violence that
his wife rushed forward and threw her arms round him.

"What are you going to do?" she demanded.

"Just get a breath of air! And you, what do you want?"

"I am only embracing you," she answered.

On March 18, 1849, a Sunday, I think it was, his wife said to him:

"I am going to church. Will you