[*] Hebert, as the reader will remember, was the furious demagogue with the foul tongue and poisoned pen who edited the Pere Duchesne at the time of the first French Revolution.  We had a revival of his politics and his journal in Paris during the Commune of 1871.—­Translator.

Rose made her appearance at the heels of the two newcomers.  Without saying a word she placed a mug of beer before Charvet and a tray before Clemence, who in a leisurely way began to compound a glass of “grog,” pouring some hot water over a slice of lemon, which she crushed with her spoon, and glancing carefully at the decanter as she poured out some rum, so as not to add more of it than a small liqueur glass could contain.

Gavard now presented Florent to the company, but more especially to Charvet.  He introduced them to one another as professors, and very able men, who would be sure to get on well together.  But it was probable that he had already been guilty of some indiscretion, for all the men at once shook hands with a tight and somewhat masonic squeeze of each other’s fingers.  Charvet, for his part, showed himself almost amiable; and whether he and the others knew anything of Florent’s antecedents, they at all events indulged in no embarrassing allusions.

“Did Manoury pay you in small change?” Logre asked Clemence.

She answered affirmatively, and produced a roll of francs and another of two-franc pieces, and unwrapped them.  Charvet watched her, and his eyes followed the rolls as she replaced them in her pocket, after counting their contents and satisfying herself that they were correct.

“We have our accounts to settle,” he said in a low voice.

“Yes, we’ll settle up to-night,” the young woman replied.  “But we are about even, I should think.  I’ve breakfasted with you four times, haven’t I?  But I lent you a hundred sous last week, you know.”

Florent, surprised at hearing this, discreetly turned his head away.  Then Clemence slipped the last roll of silver into her pocket, drank a little of her grog, and, leaning against the glazed partition, quietly settled herself down to listen to the men talking politics.  Gavard had taken up the newspaper again, and, in tones which he strove to render comic, was reading out some passages of the speech from the throne which had been delivered that morning at the opening of the Chambers.  Charvet made fine sport of the official phraseology; there was not a single line of it which he did not tear to pieces.  One sentence afforded especial amusement to them all.  It was this:  “We are confident, gentlemen, that, leaning on your lights[*] and the conservative sentiments of the country, we shall succeed in increasing the national prosperity day by day.”

[*] In the sense of illumination of mind.  It has been necessary to give a literal translation of this phrase to enable the reader to realise the point of subsequent witticisms in which Clemence and Gavard indulge.  —­Translator.

Logre rose up and repeated this sentence, and by speaking through his nose succeeded fairly well in mimicking the Emperor’s drawling voice.