“When one has seen what we have seen during June, and on the second of December, there is no longer any question of sentiment.”  Here the engraver, as a hospitable host, brought a bottle of wine and two glasses.  “No, Monsieur Gerard, I thank you, I take nothing between my meals.  The workingmen have been deceived too often, and at the next election we shall not let the bourgeoisie strangle the Republic.” (M.  Gerard had now uncorked the bottle.) “Only a finger!  Enough!  Enough! simply so as not to refuse you.  While waiting, let us prepare ourselves.  Just now the Eastern question muddles us, and behold ’Badinguet,’—­[A nickname given to Napoleon III.]—­with a big affair upon his hands.  You have some wine here that is worth drinking.  If he loses one battle he is done for.  One glass more?  Ah! you make me depart from my usual custom—­absolutely done for.  But this time we shall keep our eyes open.  No half measures!  We will return to the great methods of ’ninety-three—­the Committee of Public Safety, the Law of Suspects, the Revolutionary Tribunal, every damned one of them! and, if it is necessary, a permanent guillotine!  To your good health!”

So much energy frightened Father Gerard a little; for in spite of his Barbes pipe-bowl he was not a genuine red-hot Republican.  He dared not protest, however, and blushed a little as he thought that the night before an editor had proposed to him to engrave a portrait of the new Empress, very decollete, and showing her famous shoulders, and that he had not said No; for his daughters needed new shoes, and his wife had declared the day before that she had not a gown to put on.

So for several months he had four children—­Amedee, Louise, Maria, and little Rose Combarieu—­to make a racket in his apartment.  Certainly they were no longer babies; they did not play at making calls nor chase the old fur hat around the room; they were more sensible, and the old furniture had a little rest.  And it was time, for all the chairs were lame, two of the larger ones had lost an arm each, and the Empire sofa had lost the greater part of its hair through the rents in its dark-green velvet covering.  The unfortunate square piano had had no pity shown it; more out of tune and asthmatic than ever, it was now always open, and one could read above the yellow and worn-out keyboard a once famous name-"Sebastian Erard, Manufacturer of Pianos and Harps for S.A.R.  Madame la Duchesse de Berri.”  Not only Louise, the eldest of the Gerards—­a large girl now, having been to her first communion, dressing her hair in bands, and wearing white waists—­not only Louise, who had become a good musician, had made the piano submit to long tortures, but her sister Maria, and Amedee also, already played the ‘Bouquet de Bal’ or ’Papa, les p’tits bateaux’.  Rosine, too, in her character of street urchin, knew all the popular songs, and spent entire hours in picking out the airs with one finger upon the old instrument.