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.

“As you see, Madame, it is a boy.”

“What do you intend to make of him when he grows up?” asked Louise, who lent herself complacently to the play, for she was ten years old and quite a young lady, if you please.

“Why, Madame,” replied Maria, gravely, “he will be a soldier.”

At that moment the engraver, who had left his bench to stretch his legs a little and to light his Abd-el-Kader for the third time, came and stood at the threshold of his room.  Madame Gerard, reassured as to the state of her stew, which was slowly cooking—­and oh, how good it smelled in the kitchen!—­entered the dining-room.  Both looked at the children, so comical and so graceful, as they made their little grimaces!  Then the husband glanced at his wife, and the wife at the husband, and both burst out into hearty laughter.