“Oh, nothing, nothing!  You are much better.  Only, my poor Lucie, we must put on another blister to-night.”

Oh, how monotonous and slow these days were to the little Amedee, near the drowsy invalid, in the close room smelling of drugs, where only the old snuff-taker entered once an hour to bring a cup of tea or put charcoal upon the fire!

Sometimes their neighbor, Madame Gerard, would come to inquire after the sick lady.

“Still very feeble, my good Madame Gerard,” his mother would respond.  “Ah, I am beginning to get discouraged.”

But Madame Gerard would not let her be despondent.

“You see, Madame Violette, it is this horrible, endless winter.  It is almost March now; they are already selling boxes of primroses in little carts on the sidewalks.  You will surely be better as soon as the sun shines.  If you like, I will take little Amedee back with me to play with my little girls.  It will amuse the child.”

So it happened that the good neighbor kept the child every afternoon, and he became very fond of the little Gerard children.

Four little rooms, that is all; but with a quantity of old, picturesque furniture; engravings, casts, and pictures painted by comrades were on the walls; the doors were always open, and the children could always play where they liked, chase each other through the apartments or pillage them.  In the drawing-room, which had been transformed into a work-room, the artist sat upon a high stool, point in hand; the light from a curtainless window, sifting through the transparent paper, made the worthy man’s skull shine as he leaned over his copper plate.  He worked hard all day; with an expensive house and two girls to bring up, it was necessary.  In spite of his advanced opinions, he continued to engrave his Prince Louis—­“A rogue who is trying to juggle us out of a Republic.”  At the very most, he stopped only two or three times a day to smoke his Abu-el-Kader.  Nothing distracted him from his work; not even the little ones, who, tired of playing their piece for four hands upon the piano, would organize, with Amedee, a game of hide-and-seek close by their father, behind the old Empire sofa ornamented with bronze lions’ heads.  But Madame Gerard, in her kitchen, where she was always cooking something good for dinner, sometimes thought they made too great an uproar.  Then Maria, a real hoyden, in trying to catch her sister, would push an old armchair against a Renaissance chest and make all the Rouen crockery tremble.

“Now then, now then, children!” exclaimed Madame Gerard, from the depths of her lair, from which escaped a delicious odor of bacon.  “Let your father have a little quiet, and go and play in the dining-room.”

They obeyed; for there they could move chairs as they liked, build houses of them, and play at making calls.  Did ever anybody have such wild ideas at five years of age as this Maria?  She took the arm of Amedee, whom she called her little husband, and went to call upon her sister and show her her little child, a pasteboard doll with a large head, wrapped up in a napkin.