“I have the right idea of my old man now!  I will dress him in a tricot waistcoat with ragged sleeves and dirty blue overalls.  He is an apprentice, is he not?  A fellow with a beard!  Very well! in the great scene where they tell him that his son is a thief and he defies the whole of the workmen, he struggles and his clothes are torn open, showing a hairy chest.  I am not hairy, but I will make myself so—­does that fill the bill?  You will see the effect.”

While reserving the right to dissuade Jocquelet from making himself up in this way, Amedee carried his manuscript to the director of the Theatre Francais, who asked a little time to look it over, and also promised the young poet that he would read it aloud to the committee.

Amedee is very anxious, although Maurice Roger, to whom he has read the piece, act by act, predicts an enthusiastic acceptance.

The handsome Maurice has been installed for more than a year in a studio on the Rue d’Assas and leads a jolly, free life there.  Does he work?  Sometimes; by fits and starts.  And although he abandons his sketches at the first attack of idleness, there is a charm about these sketches, suspended upon the wall; and he will some day show his talent.  One of his greatest pleasures is to see pass before him all his beautiful models, at ten francs an hour.  With palette in hand, he talks with the young women, tells them amusing stories, and makes them relate all their love-affairs.  When friends come to see him, they can always see a model just disappearing behind a curtain.  Amedee prefers to visit his friend on Sunday afternoons, and thus avoid meeting these models; and then, too, he meets there on that day Arthur Papillon, who paves the way for his political career by pleading lawsuits for the press.  Although he is, at heart, only a very moderate Liberalist, this young man, with the very chic side whiskers, defends the most republican of “beards,” if it can be called defending; for in spite of his fine oratorical efforts, his clients are regularly favored with the maximum of punishment.  But they are all delighted with it, for the title of “political convict” is one very much in demand among the irreconcilables.  They are all convinced that the time is near when they will overthrow the Empire, without suspecting, alas! that in order to do that twelve hundred thousand German bayonets will be necessary.  The day after the triumph, the month of imprisonment will be taken into account, and St. Pelagie is not the ‘carcere duro’.  Papillon is cunning and wishes to have a finger in every pie, so he goes to dine once a week with those who owe their sojourn in this easy-going jail to him, and regularly carries them a lobster.