“She’s not a girl to say anything,” was the reply; “but fifty years hence she’ll remember the insult as if it were done to her the night before, and revenge it cruelly.  She is a person that I, for one, don’t want to be at war with.”

“The slight these young ladies mean to put upon her is all the more unkind,” said another young girl, “because yesterday, Mademoiselle Ginevra was very sad.  Her father, they say, has just resigned.  They ought not to add to her trouble, for she was very considerate of them during the Hundred Days.  Never did she say a word to wound them.  On the contrary, she avoided politics.  But I think our ultras are acting more from jealousy than from party spite.”

“I have a great mind to go and get Mademoiselle Piombo’s easel and place it next to mine,” said Matilde Roguin.  She rose, but second thoughts made her sit down again.

“With a character like hers,” she said, “one can’t tell how she would take a civility; better wait events.”

“Ecco la,” said the young girl with the black eyes, languidly.

The steps of a person coming up the narrow stairway sounded through the studio.  The words:  “Here she comes!” passed from mouth to mouth, and then the most absolute silence reigned.

To understand the importance of the ostracism imposed by the act of Amelie Thirion, it is necessary to add that this scene took place toward the end of the month of July, 1815.  The second return of the Bourbons had shaken many friendships which had held firm under the first Restoration.  At this moment families, almost all divided in opinion, were renewing many of the deplorable scenes which stain the history of all countries in times of civil or religious wars.  Children, young girls, old men shared the monarchial fever to which the country was then a victim.  Discord glided beneath all roofs; distrust dyed with its gloomy colors the words and the actions of the most intimate friends.

Ginevra Piombo loved Napoleon to idolatry; how, then, could she hate him?  The emperor was her compatriot and the benefactor of her father.  The Baron di Piombo was among those of Napoleon’s devoted servants who had co-operated most effectually in the return from Elba.  Incapable of denying his political faith, anxious even to confess it, the old baron remained in Paris in the midst of his enemies.  Ginevra Piombo was all the more open to condemnation because she made no secret of the grief which the second Restoration caused to her family.  The only tears she had so far shed in life were drawn from her by the twofold news of Napoleon’s captivity on the “Bellerophon,” and Labedoyere’s arrest.