rk! She asked him to help her, and he did;
but she had scarcely gone a few steps when she was arrested and taken to
the prison of l'Abbaye de St. Germain, hard by, whither David followed
to intercede for her. He was told to come back next morning, and that
same evening communicated the affair to me. I decided there and then to
accompany him, in order to carry out my plan of redeeming that human
soul if possible. I failed, though through no fault of my own, but my
attempt brought me in contact with a personage scarcely less interesting
in his own way than David, namely, M. Canler, the future head of the
Paris detective force. It was through him that I got an insight into
some of the most revolting features of criminal life in Paris. But,
before dealing with that subject, I wish to devote a few more lines to
David, whom I had the honour of numbering among my friends till the day
of his death, albeit that the last few years of his life were spent away
from France, whither he returned, however, to die in '56. After the Coup
d'Etat he was exiled by Louis-Napoleon--ostensibly, for his political
opinions; in reality, because he had refused to finish the monument for
Queen Hortense's tomb after her son's fiasco at Boulogne.

Writing about France and Frenchmen, I feel somewhat reluctant to make
too lavish a use of the words "patriot" and "patriotism," especially
with the patriots and the patriotism of the Third Republic around me.
But I have no hesitation in saying that, to David d'Angers, these words
meant something almost sacred. Sprung from exceedingly poor parents, he
had amassed, by honest work, a fortune which, to men born in a higher
sphere and with far more expensive tastes, might seem sufficient. Seeing
that he was frugality and simplicity personified, that his income was
mainly spent in alleviating distress, and that his daughter was even
more simple-minded than her father, he had nothing to gain by the advent
of a republic, nothing to lose by the establishment of a monarchy or
empire, and his ardent championship of republican institutions--such as
he conceived them--was prompted solely by his noble nature. That
Louis-Napoleon should have exiled such a man was an error his warmest
friends could scarcely forgive him. But David never complained, any more
than he ever uttered a harsh word against the memory of Flaxman, who, in
his youth, had shut his doors against him under the impression that he
was a relation of Louis Da