the young man would seat himself
between the widow and the two orphans.

Alas, how hard these poor ladies' lives had become! Damourette, a member
of the Institute, remembered that he had once joked in the studios with
Gerard, and obtained a small annual pension for the widow; but it was
charity--hardly enough to pay the rent. Fortunately Louise, who already
looked like an old maid at twenty-three, going about the city all day
with her roll of music under her black shawl, had many pupils, and
more than twenty houses had well-nigh become uninhabitable through her
exertions with little girls, whose red hands made an unendurable racket
with their chromatic scales. Louise's earnings constituted the surest
part of their revenue. What a strange paradox is the social life
in large cities, where Weber's Last Waltz will bring the price of a
four-pound loaf of bread, and one pays the grocer with the proceeds of
Boccherini's Minuet!

In spite of all, they had hard work to make both ends meet at the
Gerards. The pretty Maria wished to make herself useful and aid her
mother and sister. She had always shown great taste for drawing, and her
father used to give her lessons in pastel. Now she went to the Louvre to
work, and tried to copy the Chardins and Latours. She went there alone.
It was a little imprudent, she was so pretty; but Louise had no time to
go with her, and her mother had to be at home to attend to the housework
and cooking. Maria's appearance had already excited the hearts of
several young daubers. There were several cases of persistent sadness
and loss of appetite in Flandrin's studio; and two of Signol's pupils,
who were surprised hovering about the young artist, were hated secretly
as rivals; certain projects of duels, after the American fashion, were
profoundly considered. To say that Maria was not a little flattered
to see all these admirers turn timidly and respectfully toward her; to
pretend that she took off her hat and hung it on one corner of her easel
because the heat from the furnace gave her neuralgia and not to show
her beautiful hair, would be as much of a lie as a politician's promise.
However, the little darling was very serious, or at least tried to be.
She worked conscientiously and made some progress. Her last copy of the
portrait of that Marquise who holds a pug dog in her lap, with a ribbon
about his neck, was not very bad. This copy procured a piece of good
luck for the young artist.

Pere Issac