uncorked the bottle.) "Only a finger! Enough! Enough! simply so as not
to refuse you. While waiting, let us prepare ourselves. Just now the
Eastern question muddles us, and behold 'Badinguet,'--[A nickname given
to Napoleon III.]--with a big affair upon his hands. You have some wine
here that is worth drinking. If he loses one battle he is done for. One
glass more? Ah! you make me depart from my usual custom--absolutely
done for. But this time we shall keep our eyes open. No half measures!
We will return to the great methods of 'ninety-three--the Committee of
Public Safety, the Law of Suspects, the Revolutionary Tribunal, every
damned one of them! and, if it is necessary, a permanent guillotine! To
your good health!"

So much energy frightened Father Gerard a little; for in spite of his
Barbes pipe-bowl he was not a genuine red-hot Republican. He dared not
protest, however, and blushed a little as he thought that the night
before an editor had proposed to him to engrave a portrait of the new
Empress, very decollete, and showing her famous shoulders, and that he
had not said No; for his daughters needed new shoes, and his wife had
declared the day before that she had not a gown to put on.

So for several months he had four children--Amedee, Louise, Maria, and
little Rose Combarieu--to make a racket in his apartment. Certainly they
were no longer babies; they did not play at making calls nor chase the
old fur hat around the room; they were more sensible, and the old
furniture had a little rest. And it was time, for all the chairs were
lame, two of the larger ones had lost an arm each, and the Empire sofa
had lost the greater part of its hair through the rents in its dark-green
velvet covering. The unfortunate square piano had had no pity shown it;
more out of tune and asthmatic than ever, it was now always open, and one
could read above the yellow and worn-out keyboard a once famous name-