situated in front of Val-de-Grace, where he had formed the habit of going.  Then he would return to his garret, and relight his stove and lamp, and work until midnight.  This ardent, continuous effort, this will-tension kept in his mind the warmth, animation, and excitement indispensable for poetical production.  His mind expanded rapidly, ready to receive the germs that were blown to him by the mysterious winds of inspiration.  At times he was astonished to see his pen fill the sheet so rapidly that he would stop, filled with pride at having thus reduced to obedience words and rhythms, and would ask himself what supernatural power had permitted him to arm these divine wild birds.

On Sundays, he had his meals brought him by the concierge, working all day and not going out until nearly five o’clock in the afternoon, to dine with Mamma Gerard.  It was the only distraction that he allowed himself, or rather the only recompense that he permitted himself.  He walked halfway across Paris to buy a cake in the Rue Fontaine for their dessert; then he climbed without fatigue, thanks to his young legs, to the top of Montmartre, lighted by swinging lamps, where one could almost believe one’s self in the distant corner of some province.  They would be waiting for him to serve the soup, and the young man would seat himself between the widow and the two orphans.

Alas, how hard these poor ladies’ lives had become!  Damourette, a member of the Institute, remembered that he had once joked in the studios with Gerard, and obtained a small annual pension for the widow; but it was charity—­hardly enough to pay the rent.  Fortunately Louise, who already looked like an old maid at twenty-three, going about the city all day with her roll of music under her black shawl, had many pupils, and more than twenty houses had well-nigh become uninhabitable through her exertions with little girls, whose red hands made an unendurable racket with their chromatic scales.  Louise’s earnings constituted the surest part of their revenue.  What a strange paradox is the social life in large cities, where Weber’s Last Waltz will bring the price of a four-pound loaf of bread, and one pays the grocer with the proceeds of Boccherini’s Minuet!

In spite of all, they had hard work to make both ends meet at the Gerards.  The pretty Maria wished to make herself useful and aid her mother and sister.  She had always shown great taste for drawing, and her father used to give her lessons in pastel.  Now she went to the Louvre to work, and tried to copy the Chardins and Latours.  She went there alone.  It was a little imprudent, she was so pretty; but Louise had no time to go with her, and her mother had to be at home to attend to the housework and cooking.  Maria’s appearance had already excited the hearts of several young daubers.  There were several cases of persistent sadness and loss of appetite in Flandrin’s studio; and two of Signol’s pupils, who were surprised hovering about the young