Ah! the songs of those days, the last of romanticism, the make-believe ‘Orientales’; ‘Odes’ and ‘Ballads’, by the dozen; ’Comes d’Espagne et d’Italie’, with their pages, turrets, chatelaines; bull-fighters, Spanish ladies; vivandieres, beguiled away from their homes under the pale of the church, “near a stream of running water, by a gay and handsome chevalier,” and many other such silly things—­Amedee will remember them always!  They bring back to him, clearly and strongly, certain happy hours in his childhood!  They make him smell again at times even the odor that pervaded the Gerards’ house.  A mule-driver’s song will bring up before his vision the engraver working at his plate before the curtainless window on a winter’s day.  It snows in the streets, and large white flakes are slowly falling behind the glass; but the room, ornamented with pictures and busts, is lighted and heated by a bright coke fire.  Amedee can see himself seated in a corner by the fire, learning by heart a page of the “Epitome” which he must recite the next morning at M. Batifol’s.  Maria and Rosine are crouched at his feet, with a box of glass beads, which they are stringing into a necklace.  It was comfortable; the whole apartment smelled of the engraver’s pipe, and in the dining-room, whose door is half opened, Louise is at the piano, singing, in a fresh voice, some lines where “Castilla” rhymes with “mantilla,” and “Andalousie” with “jealousy,” while her agile fingers played on the old instrument an accompaniment supposed to imitate bells and castanets.

Or perhaps it is a radiant morning in June, and they are in the dining-room; the balcony door is open wide, and a large hornet buzzes loudly in the vine.  Louise is still at the piano; she is singing this time, and trying to reach the low tones of a dramatic romance where a Corsican child is urged on to vengeance by his father: 

          Tiens, prends ma carabiue! 
          Sur toi veillera Dieu—­

This is a great day, the day when Mamma Gerard makes her gooseberry preserves.  There is a large basin already full of it on the table.  What a delicious odor!  A perfume of roses mingled with that of warm sugar.  Maria and Rosine have just slipped into the kitchen, the gourmands!  But Louise is a serious person, and will not interrupt her singing for such a trifle.  She continues to sing in a low voice:  and at the moment when Amedee stands speechless with admiration before her, as she is scolding in a terrible tone and playing dreadful chords, to and behold! here come the children, both with pink moustaches, and licking their lips voluptuously.

Ah! these were happy hours to Amedee.  They consoled him for the interminable days at M. Batifol’s.