"You have nothing to do with the quarrel," his companion said.

"No, I have nothing to do with the quarrel; but if I were walking along the streets and saw a big lout pick a quarrel with a weaker one and then proceed to smash him up altogether, I fancy I should take a hand in the business. The Germans deliberately forced on the war. They knew perfectly well that when they put up a German Prince as candidate for the throne of Spain it would bring on a war with France. Why, we ourselves were within an ace of going to war with France when Guizot brought about the Spanish marriage, although it was comparatively of slight importance to us that Spain and France should be united. But to the French this thing was an absolutely vital question, for with Germany and Spain united their very existence would be threatened, and they had nothing for it but to fight, as Germany knew they would have to do."

"But the candidature was withdrawn, Hartington."

"Withdrawn! ay, after the damage was done and France in a flame of indignation. If a man meets me in the street and pulls me by the nose, do you think that if he takes off his hat and bows and says that he withdraws the insult I am going to keep my hands in my pockets? Twice already has France been humiliated and has stood it? Once when Prussia made that secret treaty with Bavaria and Baden, and threw it scornfully in her face; the second time over that Luxembourg affair. Does Germany think that a great nation, jealous of its honor and full of fiery elements, is going to stand being kicked as often as she chooses to kick her? You may say that France was wrong in going to war when she was really unprepared, and I grant she was unwise, but when a man keeps on insulting you, you don't say to yourself I must go and take lessons in boxing before I fight him. You would hit out straight even if he were twice as big as yourself. That is what I feel about it, Dampierre, and feeling so I fancy that when the thing begins here I shall get too hot over it to help joining in. Ah, here come some of the lads."

There was a clatter of feet on the staircase, and a moment later half a dozen young Frenchmen ran in in a state of wild excitement.

"They have entered Versailles, a party of their horsemen have been seen from Valerian, and a shot has been fired at them. They have fled."

"Well, I should think they naturally would," Cuthbert said. "A handful of horsemen are not likely to remain to be made targets of by the guns of Valerian."

"It is the beginning of the end," one of the students exclaimed. "Paris will assert herself, France will come to her assistance, and the Germans will find that it is one thing to fight against the armies of a despot, and another to stand before a free people in arms."

"I hope so, Rene, but I own I have considerable doubts of it. A man when he begins to fight, fights because he is there and has got to do it. If he does not kill the enemy he will be killed; if he does not thrash the enemy he will be thrashed; and for the time being the question whether it is by a despot or by a Provisional Government that he is ruled does not matter to him one single jot. As to the Parisians, we shall see. I sincerely hope, they will do all that you expect of them, but in point of fact I would rather have a battalion of trained soldiers than a brigade of untrained peasants or citizens, however full of ardor they may be."

"Ah, you English, it is always discipline, discipline."

"You are quite right, Rene, that is when it comes to fighting in the open; fighting in the streets of a town is a very different thing. Then I grant individual pluck will do wonders. Look at Saragosa, look at Lucknow. Civilians in both cases fought as well as the best trained soldiers could do, but in the field discipline is everything. Putting aside the great battles where your feudal lords, with their brave but undisciplined followers, met our disciplined bow and billmen, look at the Jacquerie, the peasants were brave enough, and were animated by hate and despair, but they were scattered like chaff by mere handfuls of knights and men-at-arms. The Swiss have defended their mountains against the armies of despots, because they had mountains to defend, and were accustomed to scaling the rocks, and all good shots, just as the people of a town might hold their streets. I believe that you will hold Paris. I doubt whether the Germans will ever be able to enter your walls, but famine will enter, and, defend yourselves as obstinately as you may, the time must come when food will give out."

"As if we should wait to be starved," another of the students said scoffingly. "If the time comes when there's nothing to eat, we would set Paris on fire and hurl ourselves every man upon the Germans, and fight our way through. Do you think that they could block every road round Paris?"

"I know nothing about military affairs, Leroux, and therefore don't suppose anything one way or the other. I believe the Parisians will make a gallant defence, and they have my heartiest good wishes and sympathy, and when all you men join the ranks my intention is to go with you. But as to the end, my belief is that it will be decided not by Paris but by France."

"Bravo, bravo, Cuthbert," the others exclaimed, "that shows, indeed, that you love France. Rene said he thought you would shoulder a musket with us, but we said Englishmen only fought either for duty or interest, and we did not see why you should mix yourself up in it."

"Then you are altogether wrong. If you said Englishmen don't fight for what you call glory, you would be right, but you can take my word for it that in spite of what peace-at-any-price people may say, there are no people in the world who are more ready to fight when they think they are right, than Englishmen. We find it hard enough to get recruits in time of peace, but in time of war we can get any number we want. The regiments chosen to go to the front are delighted, those who have to stay behind are furious. Glory has nothing to do with it. It is just the love of fighting. I don't say that I am thinking of joining one of your volunteer battalions because I want to fight. I do so because I think you are in the right, and that this war has been forced upon you by the Germans, who are likely to inflict horrible sufferings on the city."

"Never mind why you are going to fight," Leroux said, "you are going to fight for us, and that is enough. You are a good comrade. And your friend, here, what is he going to do?"

"I shall join also," Dampierre said. "You are a Republic now, like our own, and of course my sympathies are wholly with you."

"Vive la Republique! Vive l'Americain!" the students shouted.

Cuthbert Hartington shrugged his shoulders.

"We were just starting for a stroll to the walls to see how they are getting on with the work of demolition. Are any of you disposed to go with us?"

They were all disposed, being in so great a state of excitement that anything was better than staying indoors quietly. The streets were full of people, carts were rumbling along, some filled with provisions, others with the furniture and effects of the houses now being pulled down outside the enciente, or from the villas and residences at Sevres Meudon and other suburbs and villages outside the line of defence.

Sometimes they came upon battalions of newly-arrived mobiles, who were loudly cheered by the populace as they marched along; sturdy sunburnt peasants with but little of the bearing of soldiers, but with an earnest serious expression that seemed to say they would do their best against the foes who were the cause of their being torn away from their homes and occupations. Staff officers galloped about at full speed; soldiers of the garrison or of Vinoy's Corps, who had come in a day or two before, lounged about the streets looking in at the shops. No small proportion of the male population wore kepis, which showed that they belonged either to the National Guard or to the battalions that were springing into existence.

"Why do we not register our names to-day!" Rene exclaimed.

"Because a day or two will make no difference," Cuthbert replied, "and it is just as well to find out before we do join something about the men in command. Let us above all things choose a corps where they have had the good sense to get hold of two or three army men, who have had experience in war, as their field officers. We don't want to be under a worthy citizen who has been elected solely because he is popular in his quarter, or a demagogue who is chosen because he is a fluent speaker, and has made himself conspicuous by his abuse of Napoleon. This is not the time for tomfoolery; we want men who will keep a tight hand over us, and make us into fair soldiers. It may not be quite agreeable at first, but a corps that shows itself efficient is sure to be chosen when there is work to be done, and will be doing outpost duty, whilst many of the others will be kept within the walls as being of no practical use. Just at present everything is topsy-turvy, but you may be sure that Trochu and Vinoy, and the other generals will gradually get things into shape, and will not be long before they find what corps are to be depended on and what are not."

Crossing the river they made their way out beyond the walls. Even the light-hearted students were sobered by the sight beyond. Thousands of men were engaged on the work of demolition. Where but ten days since stood villas surrounded by gardens and trees, there was now a mere waste of bricks and mortar stretching down to the Forts of Issy and Vanves. The trees had all been felled and for the most part cut up and carried into Paris for firewood. Most of the walls were levelled, and frequent crashes of masonry showed that these last vestiges of bright and happy homes would soon disappear. A continuous stream of carts and foot-passengers came along the road to the gate—the men grim and bitter, the women crying, and all laden with the most valued of their little belongings. Numbers of cattle and herds of sheep, attended by guards, grazed in the fields beyond the forts.

"By Jove, Dampierre," Cuthbert said, "if I hadn't made up my mind to join a corps before, this scene would decide me. It is pitiful to see all these poor people, who have no more to do with the war than the birds in the air, rendered homeless. A good many of the birds have been rendered homeless too, but fortunately for them it is autumn instead of spring, and they have neither nests nor nestlings to think of, and can fly away to the woods on the slopes below Meudon."

"What a fellow you are, Hartington, to be thinking of the birds when there are tens of thousands of people made miserable."

"I fancy the birds are just as capable of feeling misery as we are," Cuthbert said quietly, "not perhaps over trivial matters, though they do bicker and quarrel a good deal among themselves, but they have their great calamities, and die of thirst, of hunger, and of cold. I remember during a very hard frost some years ago our garden was full of dying birds, though my father had bushels of grain thrown to them every day. It was one of the most painful sights I ever saw, and I know I felt pretty nearly as much cut up at it as I do now. I hate to see dumb animals suffer. There is a sort of uncomplaining misery about them that appeals to one, at any rate appeals to me, infinitely. These poor fellows are suffering too, you will say. Yes, but they have their consolation. They promise themselves that as soon as they get into Paris they will join a corps and take vengeance on those who have hurt them. They may think, and perhaps with reason, that when the trouble is over, they will find their cottages still standing, and will take up life again as they left it. They have at least the consolation of swearing, a consolation which, as far as I know, is denied to animals and birds."

"You are a rum fellow, Hartington, and I never know when you are in earnest and when you are not."

"Let us go back," Rene Caillard, who, with the others, had been standing silently, said abruptly. "This is too painful; I feel suffocated to think that such a humiliation should fall on Paris. Surely all civilized Europe will rise and cry out against this desecration." He turned and with his comrades walked back towards the gate. Cuthbert followed with Arnold Dampierre.

"That is just the way with them," the former said, "it would have been no desecration had they encamped before Berlin, but now, because it is the other way, they almost expect a miracle from Heaven to interpose in their favor. Curious people the French. Their belief in themselves is firm and unshakable, and whatever happens it is the fault of others, and not of themselves. Now, in point of fact, from all we hear, the Germans are conducting the war in a very much more humane and civilized way than the French would have done if they had been the invaders, and yet they treat their misfortunes as if high Heaven had never witnessed such calamities. Why, the march of the Germans has been a peaceful procession in comparison with Sherman's march or Sheridan's forays. They have sacked no city, their path is not marked by havoc and conflagration; they fight our men, and maybe loot deserted houses, but as a rule unarmed citizens and peasants have little to complain of."

"That is true enough," the other agreed reluctantly.

"My opinion is," Cuthbert went on, "that all these poor people who are flocking into Paris are making a hideous mistake. If they stopped in their villages the betting is that no harm would have come to them; whereas now they have left their homes unguarded and untenanted—and it would not be human nature if the Germans did not occupy them—while in Paris they will have to go through all the privations and hardships of a siege and perhaps of a bombardment; besides there are so many more hungry mouths to feed. In my opinion Trochu and the Provisional Government would have acted very much more wisely had they issued an order that no strangers, save those whose houses have been destroyed, should be allowed to enter the city, and advising the inhabitants of all the villages round either to remain quietly in their homes, or to retire to places at a distance. Fighting men might, of course, come in, but all useless mouths will only hasten the date when famine will force the city to surrender."

"You seem very sure that it will surrender sooner or later, Hartington," Dampierre said, irritably. "My opinion is that all France will rise and come to her rescue."

"If Bazaine cuts his way out of Metz they may do it, but we have heard nothing of his moving, and the longer he stays the more difficulty he will have of getting out. He has a fine army with him, but if he once gives time to the Germans to erect batteries commanding every road out of the place, he will soon find it well-nigh impossible to make a sortie. Except that army France has nothing she can really rely upon. It is all very well to talk of a general rising, but you can't create an army in the twinkling of an eye; and a host of half-disciplined peasants, however numerous, would have no chance against an enemy who have shown themselves capable of defeating the whole of the trained armies of France. No, no, Dampierre, you must make up your mind beforehand that you are going in on the losing side. Paris may hold out long enough to secure reasonable terms, but I fancy that is about all that will come of it."

The other did not reply. He had something of the unreasoning faith that pervaded France, that a Republic was invincible, and that France would finally emerge from the struggle victorious.

"We shall try and find out to-night about the corps," Rene Caillard said, as the others overtook them some distance inside the gates. "After what we have seen to-day we are all determined to join without delay. I heard last night from some men at Veillant's that they and a good many others have put their names down for a corps that is to be called the Chasseurs des Ecoles. They said they understood that it was to be composed entirely of students. Not all art, of course, but law and other schools."

"That would be just the thing," Cuthbert said, "if they can only get some good officers. One likes the men one has to work with to be a little of one's own class. Well, if the officers are all right you can put my name down. I suppose there is no occasion for me to go myself."

"Of course there is occasion, lazy one. You have to be sworn in."

Cuthbert nodded. "I suppose we shan't have to give up work altogether?"

"I should think not," Rene said. "I suppose we shall have two or three hours' drill in the morning and nothing more till the time for action comes. Of course the troops and the mobiles will do the work at the forts and walls, and we shall be only called out if the Prussians venture to attack us, or if we march out to attack them."

"So much the better. I came here to work, and I want to stick to it and not waste my time in parades and sentry duty. Well, we shall meet at the studio in the morning and you can give us your news then."

Some fifteen young men met on the following morning at Goude's studio.

"Now, gentlemen," said the artist, a short man, with a large head, and an abundant crop of yellow hair falling on to his shoulders, "please to attend to business while you are here. Paint—you have plenty of time outside to discuss affairs."

M. Goude was an artist of considerable talent, but of peppery temper. He had at one time gone to war with the Hanging Committee of the Salon because one of his paintings had been so badly hung that he declared it to be nothing short of an insult, and had forthwith proceeded to publish the most violent strictures upon them. The result was that on the following year his pictures were not hung at all, whereupon, after another onslaught upon them, he had declared his determination never again to submit a picture to the judgment of men whose natural stupidity was only equalled by their ignorance of art.

This vow he had for eight years adhered to, only occasionally painting a picture and selling it privately, but devoting himself almost entirely to the studio he had opened, when he ceased exhibiting. He was an admirable teacher and his list of pupils was always full. He was an exacting master and would take none but students who showed marked ability. As a preliminary picture had to be presented to him for examination, and at least three out of four of the canvases sufficed to ensure their authors' prompt rejection.

It was, therefore, considered an honor to be one of Goude's pupils, but it had its drawbacks. His criticisms were severe and bitter; and he fell into violent passions when, as Leroux once observed, he looked like the yellow dwarf in a rage. Cuthbert had heard of him from Terrier, who said that Goude had the reputation of being by far the best master in Paris. He had presented himself to him as soon as he arrived there; his reception had not been favorable.

"It is useless, Monsieur," the master had said, abruptly, "there are two objections. In the first place you are too old, in the second place you are a foreigner, and I do not care to teach foreigners. I never had but one here, and I do not want another. He was a Scotchman, and because I told him one day when he had produced an atrocious daub, that he was an imbecile pig, he seized me and shook me till my teeth chattered in my head, and then kicked over the easel and went out."

"You may call me an imbecile pig if you like," Cuthbert said with his quiet smile, "it would hurt me in no way. I have come over to learn, and I am told you are the best master in Paris. When a man is a great master he must be permitted to have his peculiarities, and if he likes to treat grown-up men as children, of course he can do so, for are we not children in art by his side."

Monsieur Goude was mollified, but he did not show it.

"Have you brought any canvases with you?"

"I have brought the last two things I did before leaving London."

"Well, you can bring them if you like," the master said, ungraciously, "but I warn you it will be useless. You English cannot paint, even the best of you. You have no soul, you are monotonous, but you may bring them."

An hour later Cuthbert returned to the studio, which was now occupied by the students.

"You are prompt," the master said, looking round from the student whose work he was correcting with no small amount of grumbling and objurgation. "Put your things on those two spare easels, I will look at them presently."

Seeing that several of the other students were smoking, Cuthbert filled and lighted his pipe, calmly placed the pictures on the easels without taking off the cloths in which they were wrapped, and then put his hands into the pockets of his velvet jacket and looked round the room. After his experience of some of the luxuriously arranged studios at St. John's Wood, the room looked bare and desolate. There was no carpet and not a single chair or lounge of any description. Some fifteen young fellows were painting. All wore workmen's blouses. All had mustaches, and most of them had long hair. They appeared intent on their work, but smiles and winks were furtively exchanged, and the careless nonchalance of this tall young Englishman evidently amused them. In four or five minutes M. Goude turned round and walked towards the easels. Cuthbert stepped to them and removed the cloths. The master stopped abruptly, looked at them without speaking for a minute or two, then walked up and closely examined them.

"They are entirely your own work?" he asked.

"Certainly, I did not show either of them to my master until I had finished them."

They were companion pictures. The one was a girl standing in a veranda covered with a grapevine, through which bright rays of sunshine shone, one of them falling full on her face. She was evidently listening, and there was a look of joyous expectancy in her face. Underneath, on the margin of the canvas, was written in charcoal, "Hope." The other represented the same figure, darkly dressed, with a wan, hopeless look in her face, standing on a rock at the edge of an angry sea, over which she was gazing; while the sky overhead was dark and sombre without a rift in the hurrying clouds. It was labelled "Despair."

For two or three minutes longer M. Goude looked silently at the pictures and then turning suddenly called out, "Attention, gentlemen. Regard these pictures, they are the work of this gentleman who desires to enter my studio. In the eight years I have been teaching I have had over two hundred canvases submitted to me, but not one like these. I need not say that I shall be glad to receive him. He has been well taught. His technique is good and he has genius. Gentlemen, I have the honor to present to you Monsieur Cuthbert Hartington, who is henceforth one of you."

The students crowded round the pictures with exclamations of surprise and admiration. It was not until M. Goude said sharply "to work," that they returned to their easels.

"You will find canvases in that cupboard if you like to set at work at once. Choose your own size and subject and sketch it out in chalk. I should like to see how you work. Ah, you have a portfolio. I will look through your sketches this afternoon if you will leave it here."

Cuthbert chose a canvas from a pile ready stretched, selected a sketch from his portfolio of a wayside inn in Normandy, pinned it on the easel above the canvas, and then began to work. M. Goude did not come near him until the work was finished for the morning, then he examined what he had just done.

"You work rapidly," he said, "and your eye is good. You preserve the exact proportions of the sketch, which is excellent, though it was evidently done hastily, and unless I mistake was taken before you had begun really to paint. You did not know how to use color, though the effect is surprisingly good, considering your want of method at the time. I will look through your portfolio while I am having my lunch. In an hour we resume work." So saying he took up the portfolio and left the room. The students now came up to Cuthbert and introduced themselves one by one.

"You see our master in his best mood to-day," one said. "I never have seen him so gracious, but no wonder. Now we have no ceremony here. I am Rene, and this is Pierre, and this Jean, and you will be Cuthbert."

"It is our custom in England," Cuthbert said, "that a new boy always pays his footing; so gentlemen, I hope you will sup with me this evening. I am a stranger and know nothing of Paris; at any rate nothing of your quarter, so I must ask two of you to act as a committee with me, and to tell me where we can get a good supper and enjoy ourselves."

From that time Cuthbert had been one of the brotherhood and shared in all their amusements, entering into them with a gayety and heartiness that charmed them and caused them to exclaim frequently that he could not be an Englishman, and that his accent was but assumed. Arnold Dampierre had been admitted two months later. He had, the master said, distinct talent, but his work was fitful and uncertain. Some days he would work earnestly and steadily, but more often he was listless and indolent, exciting M. Goude's wrath to fever heat.

Among the students he was by no means a favorite. He did not seem to understand a joke, and several times blazed out so passionately that Cuthbert had much trouble in soothing matters down, explaining to the angry students that Dampierre was of hot southern blood and that his words must not be taken seriously. Americans, he said, especially in the south, had no idea of what the English call chaff, and he begged them as a personal favor to abstain from joking with him, or it would only lead to trouble in the studio.



CHAPTER V.

There was no more talk after the master had given the order for work. Most of the easels were shifted round and fresh positions taken up, then there was a little pause.

"She is late," M. Goude said, with an impatient stamp of the foot. The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the door opened and a girl entered.

"Good-morning, messieurs," and she made a sweeping courtesy.

"You are five minutes late, Minette."

"Ma foi, master, what would you have with the Prussians in sight and all Paris in the streets—five minutes mean neither here nor there. I expected praise for having come at all."

"There, there," the artist said hastily, "run into your closet and change, we are all waiting."

She walked across the room to a door in the corner, with an expression of careless defiance in her face, and reappeared in five minutes in the dress of a Mexican peasant girl attired for a fete. The dress suited her admirably. She was rather above the middle height, her figure lithe and supple with exceptionally graceful curves; her head was admirably poised on her neck. Her hair was very dark, and her complexion Spanish rather than French. Her father was from Marseilles and her mother from Arles.

Minette was considered the best model in Paris, and M. Goude had the merit of having discovered her. Three years before, when passing through a street inhabited by the poorer class of workmen in Montmartre, he had seen her leaning carelessly against a doorway. He was struck with the easy grace of her pose. He walked up the street and then returned. As he did so he saw her spring out and encounter an older woman, and at once enter upon a fierce altercation with her. It was carried on with all the accompaniment of southern gesture and ceased as suddenly as it began; the girl, with a gesture of scorn and contempt turning and walking back to the post she had left with a mien as haughty as that of a Queen dismissing an insolent subject.

"That girl would be worth a fortune as a model," the artist muttered. "I must secure her; her action and gesture are superb." He walked up to her, lifted his broad hat, and said "Mademoiselle, I am an artist. My name is Goude. I have an academy for painting, and I need a model. The work is not hard, it is but to sit or stand for two or three hours of a morning, and the remuneration I should offer would be five francs a day for this. Have I your permission to speak to your parents?"

There was an angry glitter in her eye—a change in her pose that, slight as it was, reminded the artist of a cat about to spring.

"A model for a painter, monsieur? Is it that you dare to propose that I shall sit without clothes to be stared at by young men? I have heard of such things. Is this what monsieur wishes?"

"Not at all, not at all," Mr. Goude said hastily. "Mademoiselle would always be dressed. She would be sometimes a Roman lady, sometimes a Spanish peasant, a Moorish girl, a Breton, or other maiden. You would always be free to refuse any costume that you considered unsuitable."

Her expression changed again. "If that is all, I might do it," she said; "it is an easy way of earning money. How often would you want me?"

"I should say three times a week, and on the other three days you would have no difficulty in obtaining similar work among artists of my own acquaintance. Here is my card and address."

The girl took it carelessly.

"I will speak to my father about it this evening when he comes home from work. You are quite sure that I shall not have to undress at all?"

"I have assured mademoiselle already that nothing of the sort will be required of her. There are models indeed who pose for figure, but these are a class apart, and I can assure mademoiselle that her feelings of delicacy will be absolutely respected."

The next day Minette Dufaure appeared at the studio and had ever since sat for all the female figures required. The air of disdain and defiance she had first shown soon passed away, and she entered with zest and eagerness upon her work. She delighted in being prettily and becomingly dressed. She listened intelligently to the master's descriptions of the characters that she was to assume, and delighted him with the readiness with which she assumed suitable poses, and the steadiness with which she maintained them.

There was nothing of the stiffness of the model in her attitudes. They had the charm of being unstudied and natural, and whether as a bacchanal, a peasant girl, or a Gaulish amazon, she looked the part equally well; her face was singularly mobile, and although this was an inferior consideration to the master, she never failed to represent the expression appropriate to the character she assumed.

Her reputation was soon established among the artists who occasionally dropped into Goude's studio, and her spare time was fully occupied, and that at much higher rates of pay than those she earned with him. After the first two or three months she came but twice a week there, as that amply sufficed for the needs of the studio. On his telling her that he should no longer require her to come three times a week, as his pupils had other things to learn besides drawing the female figure, the master said—

"I must pay you higher in future, Minette. I know that my friends are paying you five francs an hour."

"A bargain is a bargain," she said. "You came to me first, and but for you I should never have earned a penny. Now we have moved into a better street and have comfortable lodgings. We have everything we want, and I am laying by money fast. You have always treated me well, and I like you though your temper is even worse than my father's. I shall keep to my agreement as long as you keep to yours, and if you do not I shall not come here at all."

With the students Minette was a great favorite. In the pause of five minutes every half-hour to allow her to change her position, she chatted and laughed with them with the frankest good temper, more than holding her own in the sallies of chaff. When they occasionally made excursions in a body into the country to sketch and paint, she was always of the party, going in the capacity of comrade instead of that of a model, contributing a full share to the lunch basket, but ready to pose as a peasant girl with a fagot on her head, a gleaner, or a country-woman with a baby on her lap, according to the scene and requirements. It was a matter of course that Minette should be present at every supper party or little fete among the students, always being placed in the seat of honor at the head of the table, and joining in all the fun of those merry reunions. For a time she treated all alike as comrades, and accepted no compliments save those so extravagant as to provoke general laughter. Gradually, however, it came to be understood among the students that Minette made an exception in the case of Arnold Dampierre, and that on occasions when they happened to break up in pairs he was generally by her side.

"One never can tell what women will do," Rene Caillard said one evening, when five or six of them were sitting smoking together. "Now, Minette might have the pick of us."

"No, no, Rene," one of the others protested, "most of us are suited already."

"Well, several of us, then. I am at present unattached, and so are Andre, and Pierre, and Jean; so is Cuthbert. Now, putting us aside, no woman in her senses could hesitate between the Englishman and Dampierre. He has a better figure, is stronger and better looking. He is cleverer, and is as good-tempered as the American is bad; and yet she takes a fancy for Dampierre, and treats all the rest of us, including the Englishman, as if we were boys."

"I fancy women like deference," Pierre Leroux said. "She is a good comrade with us all, she laughs and jokes with us as if she were one of ourselves. Now the American very seldom laughs and never jokes. He treats her as if she were a duchess and takes her altogether seriously. I believe he would be capable of marrying her."

The others all burst into a laugh.

"What are you laughing at?" Cuthbert asked, as he entered the room at the moment.

"Pierre is just saying that he thinks the American is capable of marrying Minette."

"I hope not," Cuthbert said, more seriously than he generally spoke. "Minette is altogether charming as she is. She is full of fun and life; she is clever and sparkling. There is no doubt that in her style she is very pretty. As to her grace it needs no saying. I think she is an honest good girl, but the idea of marrying her would frighten me. We see the surface and it is a very pleasant one, but it is only the surface. Do you think a woman could look as she does in some of her poses and not feel it? We have never seen her in a passion, but if she got into one, it would be terrible. When she flashes out sometimes it is like a tongue of flame from a slumbering volcano. You would feel that there might be an eruption that would sweep everything before it. As you know, I gave up painting her after the first two months, but I sketch her in every pose; not always her whole figure, but her face, and keep the sketches for use some day. I was looking through them only yesterday and I said to myself, 'this woman is capable of anything.' She might be a Joan of Arc, or Lucraetzia Borghia. She is a puzzle to me altogether. Put her in a quiet, happy home and she might turn out one of the best of women. Let her be thrown into turbulent times and she might become a demon of mischief. At present she is altogether undeveloped. She is two and twenty in years, but a child, or rather a piquant, amusing young girl, in manner, and perhaps in disposition. She is an enigma of which I should be sorry to have to undertake the solution. As she seems, I like her immensely, but when I try to fathom what she really is, she frightens me."

The others laughed.

"Poor little Minette," Pierre Leroux said. "You are too hard upon her altogether, Cuthbert. The girl is a born actress and would make her fortune on the stage. She can represent, by the instinct of art, passions which she has never felt. She can be simple and majestic, a laughing girl and a furious woman, a Christian martyr and a bacchanal, simply because she has mobile features, intelligence, sentiment, emotion, and a woman's instinct, that is all. She is a jolly little girl, and the only fault I have to find with her is that she has the bad taste to prefer that gloomy American to me."

"Well, I hope you are right, Pierre, though I hold my own opinion unchanged—at any rate I sincerely trust that Dampierre will not make a fool of himself with her. You men do not like him because you don't understand him. You are gay and light-hearted, you take life as it comes. You form connections easily and lightly, and break them off again a few months later just as easily. Dampierre takes life earnestly. He is indolent, but that is a matter of race and blood. He would not do a dishonorable action to save his life. I believe he is the heir to a large fortune, and he can, therefore, afford to work at his art in a dilettante sort of manner, and not like us poor beggars who look forward to earning our livelihood by it. He is passionate, I grant, but that is the effect of his bringing up on a plantation in Louisiana, surrounded by his father's slaves, for though they are now free by law the nature of the negro is unchanged, and servitude is his natural position. The little white master is treated like a god, every whim is humored, and there being no restraining hand upon him, it would be strange if he did not become hasty and somewhat arrogant.

"Not that there is any arrogance about Dampierre—he is unaffected and simple in his tastes, except in the matter of his lodgings. I question if there is one of us who spends less than he does, but he no more understands you than you understand him; he takes your badinage seriously, and cannot understand that it is harmless fun. However, he is better in that respect than when he first came over, and in time, no doubt, his touchiness will die out. God forbid that he should ever spoil his life by such a hideous mistake as marrying Minette. Except on the principle that people are always attracted by their opposites, I can't account for his infatuation for this girl, or for her taking up with him. He has never alluded to the subject to me. I don't know that her name has ever been mentioned between us. I agree with you that I think he is in earnest about her, but my conclusion is certainly not formed on anything he has ever said himself. I have often thought that a good deal of his irritability arises from his annoyance at her fun and easy way with us all. He never comes to any of our little meetings. If he is really in earnest about her, I can understand that it would be a terrible annoyance to him to see her taking a lead in such meetings and associating so freely with your, let us say, temporary wives. I have seen him on some of our sketching excursions walk away, unable to contain his anger when you have all been laughing and joking with her."

"I consider that to be an insolence," Rene said hotly.

"No, no, Rene, imagine yourself five years older, and making a fortune rapidly by your art, in love with some girl whom you hope to make your wife. I ask you whether you would like to see her laughing and chatting en bonne camarade with a lot of wild young students. Still less, if you can imagine such a thing, joining heart and soul in the fun of one of their supper parties. You would not like it, would you?"

"No," Rene admitted frankly. "I own I shouldn't. Of course, I cannot even fancy such a thing occurring, but if it did I can answer for it that I should not be able to keep my temper. I think now that you put it so, we shall be able to make more allowances for the American in future."

To this the others all agreed, and henceforth the tension that had not unfrequently existed between Dampierre and his fellow-students was sensibly relaxed.

"You were not here last week, Minette," M. Goude said, as he went up on to the platform at the end of the room to arrange her pose.

"I did not think that you would expect me, master," she said, "but even if you had I could not have come. Do you think that one could stand still like a statue for hours when great things were being done, when the people were getting their liberty again, and the flag of the despot was being pulled down from the Tuileries. I have blood in my veins, master, not ice."

"Bah!" M. Goude exclaimed. "What difference does it make to you, or to anyone as far as I see, whether the taxes are levied in the name of an Emperor or of a Republic? Do you think a Republic is going to feed you any better and reduce your rents, or to permit Belleville and Montmartre to become masters of Paris? In a short time they will grumble at the Republic just as they grumble at the Emperor. It is folly and madness. The Emperor is nothing to me, the Government is nothing to me. I have to pay my taxes—they are necessary—for the army has to be kept up and the Government paid; beyond that I do not care a puff of my pipe what Government may call itself."

"You will see what you will see," said the girl, sententiously.

"I dare say, Minette, as long as I have eyes I shall do that. Now don't waste any more time."

"What am I to be, master?"

"A Spanish peasant girl dancing; hold these slips of wood in your hand, they are supposed to be castanets; now just imagine that music is playing and that you are keeping time to it with them, and swaying your body, rather than moving your feet to the music."

After two or three changes she struck an attitude that satisfied the master.

"That will do, Minette, stand as you are; you cannot improve that. Now, gentlemen, to work."

She was standing with one foot advanced, as if in the act of springing on to it; one of her arms was held above her head, the other advanced across her body; her head was thrown back, and her balance perfect.

Cuthbert looked up from his work, took out a note-book, and rapidly sketched the figure; and then, putting his book into his pocket again, returned to his work, the subject of which was a party of Breton mobiles, with stacked arms under some trees in the Champs Elysee. He had taken the sketch two days before and was now transferring it on to canvas.

"I should not be surprised," he thought to himself, "if the girl is right, and if there is not serious trouble brewing in the slums of Paris.

"As soon as these fellows find out that they are no better off for the change, and that a Republic does not mean beer and skittles, or, as they would like, unlimited absinthe and public workshops, with short hours and high pay, they will begin to get savage, and then there will be trouble. The worst of it is one can never rely upon the troops, and discipline is certainly more relaxed than usual now that the Emperor has been upset, and every Jack thinks himself as good as his master. Altogether I think we are likely to have lively times here before long. I am not sure that the enemies within are not likely to prove as great a danger to Paris as the foe without. It was a happy idea of mine to come to Paris, and I am likely to get subjects enough to last for a life-time, though I don't know that battle scenes are altogether in my line. It does not seem to me that I have any line in particular yet. It is a nuisance having to decide on that, because I have heard Wilson say an artist, like a writer, must have a line, and when he has once taken it up he must stick to it. If a man once paints sea pieces the public look to get sea pieces from him, and won't take anything else. It is the same thing if he accustoms them to Eastern, or Spanish, or any other line.

"It maybe that this war will decide the matter for me, which will be a comfort and relief, though I doubt if I shall ever be able to stick in one groove. Goude said only yesterday that I had better go on working at both figure and landscape. At present he could not give an opinion as to which I was likely to succeed in best, but that he rather fancied that scenes of life and action, combined with good backgrounds, were my forte, and battle scenes would certainly seem to come under that category."

After work was over Cuthbert went out by himself and spent the afternoon in sketching. He was engaged on a group of soldiers listening to one of their number reading a bulletin of the latest news, when his eye fell on a young lady walking with a brisk step towards him. He started, then closed his note-book suddenly, and as she was on the point of passing, turned to her and held out his hand.

"Have you dropped from the skies, Miss Brander?"

There was surprise, but neither embarrassment nor emotion on her face as she said, frankly—

"Why, Cuthbert Hartington, this is a curious meeting. I did know you were in Paris, for I had heard as much from my father, but I had no idea of your address and I have wondered many times since I came here, five weeks ago, whether we should run against each other. No, I have not dropped from the clouds, and you ought to have known I should be here; I told you that I was going to have a year in Germany and then a year in France. My year in Germany was up two months ago. I went home for a fortnight, and here I am as a matter of course."

"I might have known you would carry out your programme exactly as you had sketched it, but I thought that the disturbed state of things over here might have induced you to defer that part of the plan until a more appropriate season. Surely Paris is not just at present a pleasant abode for a young lady, and is likely to be a much more unpleasant one later on."

"I think there could hardly be a more appropriate time for being here, Mr. Hartington; one could have no better time for studying social problems than the present when conventionalities have gone to the winds and one sees people as they are; but this is hardly the place to talk. I am boarding with a family at No. 15 Avenue de Passy. Will you come and see me there?"

"Certainly I will, if you will allow me. What will be a convenient time?"

"I should say three o'clock in the afternoon. They are all out then, except Madame Michaud and her little daughter, and we shall be able to chat comfortably, which we could not do if you came in the evening, when the father is at home and two boys who are away at school during the day. Will you come to-morrow?"

"Yes, my afternoons are free at present."

She held out her hand and then walked away with a steady business-like step. Cuthbert stood watching her till she had disappeared in the crowd.

"She has no more sentiment in her composition at present," he said to himself with a laugh that had some bitterness in it, "than a nether millstone. Her mind is so wrapped up in this confounded fad of hers that there is no room in it for anything else. I might have been a cousin, instead of a man she had refused, for any embarrassment or awkwardness she felt at our sudden meeting. It clearly made no impression at all upon her. She remembers, of course, that she met me at Newquay. I don't suppose she has really forgotten that I asked her to be my wife, but it was a mere incident, and affected her no more than if I had asked her to buy a picture and she had refused. I wish to goodness I had not met her again. I had got fairly over it, and was even beginning to wonder how I ever could have wanted to marry anyone so different in every way from the sort of woman I fancied I should have fallen in love with. How foolish of her coming over to Paris at this time. Well, I daresay it has all saved a lot of trouble. I suppose at that time Brander would have been delighted at the prospect, but it would have been a very different thing after the failure of the bank. I don't think he would have made a pleasant father-in-law under the present circumstances. He is an old fox. I always thought so, and I think so more than ever now. It has been a queer affair altogether. I wonder what Mary thinks of it all. I suppose she will talk to me about it to-morrow afternoon. By the way, I have to go this evening with Rene and the others to be sworn in or attested, or whatever they call it, at the Mairie. Their report as to the officers is satisfactory. I have heard that Longfranc was an excellent officer before he came into some money, cut the army and took up art. I have no doubt he will make a good major, and he understands the men better than most army men would do. They say the Colonel is a good man, too, and was very popular with his regiment before he retired from the service."



CHAPTER VI.

On inquiry of the concierge at No. 15 Avenue de Passy, Cuthbert was informed that Madame Michaud lived on the third floor. On ascending and ringing the bell the door was opened by an elderly servant.

"I have called to see Mademoiselle Brander, is she at home?"

"She is, sir."

"Would you give her my card, if you please?"

"Mademoiselle is expecting you," the servant said, and led the way at once into a sitting-room.

It was of the usual type of such room—of good size but bare, with bee's-waxed flooring, plainly frescoed walls, and a ceiling colored gray and bordered with painted arabesques. Two or three small rugs relieved the bareness of the floor. An oval table on very thin legs stood in the middle; the chairs and couch seemed to have been made to match it, and had an eminently bare and uncomfortable appearance; a vase of flowers stood on a spindle-legged little table in front of one of the windows which opened down to the ground. Some colored prints in frames of stained wood hung on the walls, and some skimpy curtains draped the windows.

Mary Brander was seated with a writing-pad on her knee at the window unoccupied by the vase and its support. She put the writing-pad and a book, evidently a large diary, down on the floor.

"You are punctual to the minute, Mr. Hartington. I should never have credited you with that virtue."

"Nor with any other virtue, I imagine, Miss Brander," he said, with a smile.

"Oh, yes, I do. I credit you with numbers of them. Now draw that chair up to the window—it is not comfortable, but it is the best of them—and let us talk. Now, in the first place you don't know how sorry, how dreadfully sorry I have been about what has happened at home. I was shocked, indeed, at the news of the sudden death of your dear father. He was always so kind when he came to see us, and I liked him so much, I felt for you deeply. It must have been an awful shock for you. I heard it a few days after I got to Dresden. Then came the other news about that terrible failure and its consequences. It seemed too shocking altogether that you should have lost the dear old place, but I do think I was most shocked of all when I heard that my father had bought it. Somehow it did not seem to be right. Of course it must have been, but it did not seem so to me. Did it to you, Cuthbert?" and she looked at him wistfully.

"I have no doubt it was all right," he said, "and as it was to be sold, I think I preferred it should be to your father rather than anybody else. I believe I rather liked the thought that as it was not to be my home it would be yours."

She shook her head.

"It does not seem to me to be natural at all, and I was miserable all the time I was there the other day."

"Your father respected my wishes in all respects, Mary. I believe he kept on all the old servants who chose to stay. He promised me that he would not sell my father's hunters, and that no one should ride them, but that they should be pensioners as long as they lived; and the same with the dogs, and that at any time, if I moved into quarters where I could keep a dog or two, he would send up my two favorites to me."

"Yes, they are all there. I went out and gave cakes to the dogs and sugar to the horses every day, and talked to them, and I think regularly had a cry over them. It was very foolish, but I could not help it. It did all seem so wrong and so pitiful. I could not learn much about you from father. He said that you had only written once to him on business since things were finally settled; but that you had mentioned that you were going to Paris, and he said, too—" and she hesitated for a moment, "that although you had lost Fairclose and all the property, you had enough to live upon in a way—a very poor way—but still enough for that."

"Not such a very poor way," he said. "There is no secret about it. I had five thousand pounds that had been settled on my mother, and fortunately that was not affected by the smash, so I have two hundred a year, which is amply sufficient for my wants."

"It is enough, of course, to live upon in a way, Cuthbert, but so different from what you were accustomed to."

"I don't suppose you spend two hundred a year," he said, with a smile.

"Oh, no, but a woman is so different. That is just what I have, and of course I don't spend anything like all of it; but as I said, it is so different with you, who have been accustomed to spend ever so much more."

"I don't find myself in any way pinched. I can assure you my lodgings in the Quartier Latin are not what you would call sumptuous, but they are comfortable enough, and they do not stand me in a quarter of what I paid for my chambers in London. I can dine sumptuously on a franc and a half. Another franc covers my breakfast, which is generally cafe au lait and two eggs; another franc suffices for supper. So you see that my necessaries of life, including lodgings and fuel, do not come to anything like half my income, and I can spend the rest in riotous living if I choose."

The girl looked at him earnestly.

"You are not growing cynical, I hope, Cuthbert?"

"I hope not. I am certainly not conscious of it. I don't look cynical, do I?"

"No," she said, doubtfully. "I do not see any change in you, but what do you do with yourself?"

"I paint," he said.

"Really!"

"Really and truly, I have become what you wanted me to become, a very earnest person indeed, and some day people may even take to buying my pictures."

"I never quite know when you are in earnest, Cuthbert; but if it is true it is very good news. Do you mean that you are really studying?"

"I am indeed. I work at the studio of one M. Goude, and if you choose to inquire, you will find he is perhaps the best master in Paris. I am afraid the Prussians are going to interrupt my studies a good deal. This has made me angry and I have enlisted—that is to say, been sworn in as a member of the Chasseurs des Ecoles, which most of the students at Goude's have joined."

"What! You are going to fight against the Germans!" she exclaimed, indignantly. "You never can mean it, Cuthbert."

"I mean it, I can assure you," he said, amused at her indignation. "I suppose you are almost Germanized, and regard their war against the French as a just and holy cause."

"Certainly I do," she said, "though of course, I should not say so here. I am in France and living in a French family, and naturally I would say nothing that would hurt the feelings of the people round me, but there can be no doubt that the French deserve all the misfortunes that have fallen upon them. They would have invaded Germany, and all these poor young Germans have been torn away from their friends and families to fight."

"So have these young Frenchmen. To my mind the war was deliberately forced upon France, but I think we had better agree to differ on this subject. You have been among Germans and it is not unnatural that you should have accepted their version. I have been living among Frenchmen, and although I do not say that it would not have been much wiser if they had avoided falling into the pit dug for them, my sympathies are wholly with them, except in this outburst of folly that has resulted in the establishment, for a time at any rate, of a Republic. Now, I have no sympathy whatever with Republics, still less for a Republic controlled by political adventurers, and like many Frenchmen I am going to fight for France, and in no way for the Republic. At any rate let us agree to avoid the subject altogether. We shall never convince each other however much we might argue it over."

The girl was silent for two or three minutes, and then said—

"Well, we will agree not to quarrel over it. I don't know how it is that we always see things so differently, Cuthbert. However, we may talk about your doings without arguing over the cause. Of course you do not suppose there will be much fighting—a week or two will see the end of it all."

"Again we differ," he said. "I believe that there will be some sharp fighting, and I believe that Paris will hold out for months."

She looked at him incredulously.

"I should have thought," she said, after a pause, "you were the last person who would take this noisy shouting mob seriously."

"I don't think anything of the mob one way or the other," he said. "I despise them utterly; but the troops and the mobiles are sufficient to man the forts and the walls, and I believe that middle-class corps, like the one I have entered, will fight manfully; and the history of Paris has shown over and over again that the mob of Paris, fickle, vain-headed, noisy braggadocios as they are, and always have been, can at least starve well. They held out against Henry of Navarre till numbers dropped dead in the streets, and until the Spaniards came at last from the Netherlands and raised the siege, and I believe they will hold out now. They have courage enough, as has been shown over and over again at the barricades, but they will be useless for fighting because they will submit to no discipline. Still, as I said, they can starve, and it will be a long time indeed before the suffering will become intense enough to drive them to surrender. I fear that you have altogether underrated the gravity of the situation, and that you will have very severe privations to go through before the siege is over."

"I suppose I can stand it as well as others," she laughed, "but I think you are altogether wrong. However, if it should come it will be very interesting."

"Very," he said, shortly, "but I doubt if you will see it quite in the same light when it comes to eating rats."

"I should not eat them," she said, decidedly.

"Well, when it comes to that or nothing, I own that I myself shall eat rats if I can get them. I have heard that the country rat, the fellow that lives in ricks, is by no means bad eating, but I own to having a doubt as to the Paris rat."

"It is disgusting to think of such a thing," she said, indignantly, "the idea is altogether ridiculous."

"I do not know whether you consider that betting is among the things that woman has as much right to do as man; but if you do, I am ready to wager it will come to rats before Paris surrenders."

"I never made a bet in my life," she said, "but I will wager five francs with you that there will be nothing of the sort. I do not say that rats may not be eaten in the poor quarters. I do not know what they eat there. I hear they eat horse-flesh, and for anything I know they may eat rats; but I will wager that rats will never be openly sold as an article of food before Paris surrenders."

"It is a bet," he said, "and I will book it at once," and he gravely took out a pocket-book and made an entry. "And now," he said, as he replaced the book in his pocket, "how do you pass your time?"

"I spend some hours every day at the Bibliotheque. Then I take a walk in this quarter and all round the Boulevards. One can walk just as freely there as one could in Germany, but I find that I cannot venture off them into the poorer quarters; the people stare, and it is not pleasant."

"I certainly should not recommend you to make experiments that way. In the great thoroughfares a lady walking by herself passes unnoticed, especially if she looks English or American. They are coming to understand that young women in those countries are permitted an amount of freedom that is shocking to the French mind, but the idea has not permeated to the lower strata of society.

"If you are really desirous of investigating the ways of the female population of the poorer quarters, I shall be happy to escort you whenever you like, but I do not think you will be altogether gratified with the result of your researches, and I think that you would obtain a much closer insight into French lower class life by studying Balzac and some of the modern writers—they are not always savory, but at least they are realistic."

"Balzac is terrible," she said, "and some of the others I have read a little of are detestable. I don't think you can be serious in advising me to read them."

"I certainly should not advise you to read any of them, Miss Brander, if you were a young lady of the ordinary type; but as you take up the cause of woman in general it is distinctly necessary that you should study all the phases of female life. How else can you grapple with the question?"

"You are laughing at me again, Mr. Hartington," she said, somewhat indignantly.

"I can assure you that I am not. If your crusade is in favor only of girls of the upper and middle classes, you are touching but the fringe of the subject, for they are outnumbered by twenty to one by those of other classes, and those in far greater need of higher life than the others."

"It seems rather hopeless," Mary Brander said, despondently, after a pause, "one is so unable to influence them."

"Exactly so. You are setting yourself to move a mountain. When the time comes there may be an upheaval, and the mountain may move of its own accord; but the efforts of a thousand or ten thousand women as earnest as yourself would be no more use in proportion, than those of a colony of ants working to level the mountain."

"Don't discourage me, Cuthbert," she said, pitifully. "I do believe with all my heart in my principles, but I do often feel discouraged. The task seems to grow larger and more difficult the more I see of it, and I own that living a year among German women was rather crushing to me."

"That I can quite understand," he said, with a smile, "the average German woman differs as widely in her ideas—I do not say aspirations, for she has none—from your little group of theorists at Girton as the poles are apart."

"But do not think," she replied, rallying, "that I am in the least shaken because I see that the difficulty is greater than I have looked for. Your simile of ants is not correct. Great things can be done by individuals. Voltaire and Rousseau revolutionized French thought from the top to the bottom. Why should not a great woman some day rise and exercise as great influence over her sex as these two Frenchmen did? But do not let us talk about that any more. I want to hear more about what you are doing. I have thought of you so much during the past year—it has all seemed so strange and so sad. Are you really working hard—I mean steadily and regularly?"

"You evidently think that impossible," he laughed, "but I can assure you it is true. If you doubt me I will give you Goude's address, and if you call upon him and say that you have an interest in me—you can assign any reason you like, say that you are an aunt of mine and intend to make me your heir—and beg him to inform you frankly of his opinion of my work and progress, I feel sure that he will give you an account that will satisfy your doubts."

"I don't think I could do that," she said, seriously. "There, you are laughing at me again," she broke off as she looked up at him. "Of course I could not do such a thing, but I should very greatly like to know about you."

"I do think, Miss Brander, I am working hard enough and steady enough to satisfy even you. I did so for six months in England with a fellow named Terrier. He was just the master I wanted. He had not a shadow of imagination, but was up in all the technical details of painting, and in six months' hard work I really learnt to paint; previous to that I knew nothing of painting. I could make a colored sketch, but that was all, now I am on the highway to becoming an artist. Goude will only receive pupils whom he considers likely to do him credit, and on seeing two of the things I had done after I had been working with Terrier, he accepted me at once. He is a splendid master—out and away the best in Paris, and is really a great artist himself. He is a peppery little man and will tolerate no nonsense, and I can assure you that he is well satisfied with me. I am going to set to work to do a couple of pictures on my own account for next year's Salon. I should have waited another year before trying my wings, if he had not encouraged me to venture at once, and as he is very much opposed to his pupils painting for exhibition until they are sufficiently advanced to begin with a success, it is proof that he has at least some hopes of me."

"I am glad indeed, Cuthbert. I shan't be quite so sorry now as I have been about your losing Fairclose. It is so much nobler to work than it is to fritter away a life doing nothing. How tiresome it is," she said, "that you have taken this unfortunate idea in your head of joining a French corps. It will unsettle you altogether."

"Really," he broke in with a laugh, "I must protest against being considered so weak and unstable. You had a perfect right in thinking me lazy, but I don't think you have any right in considering me a reed to be shaken by every passing wind. I can assure you that I am very fixed in my resolves. I was content to be lazy before simply because there was no particular reason for my being otherwise, and I admit that constitutionally I may incline that way; but when a cataclysm occurred, and, as I may say, the foundations were shaken, it became necessary for me to work, and I took a resolution to do so, and have stuck to it. Possibly I should have done so in any case. You see when a man is told by a young lady he is a useless idler, who does but cumber the earth, it wakes him up a little."

"I am sure I didn't say that," Mary said, indignantly, but with a hot flush on her cheeks.

"Not in those precise words, but you spoke to that effect, and my conscience told me you were not far wrong in your opinion. I had begun to meditate whether I ought not to turn over a new leaf when I came in suddenly for Fairclose; that of course seemed to knock it all on the head. Then came what we may call the smash. This was so manifestly an interposition of Providence in the direction of my bestirring myself that I took the heroic resolution to work."

Mary felt that it was desirable to avoid continuing the subject. She had long since come to regard that interview in the garden as a sort of temporary aberration on his part, and that although, perhaps, sincere at the moment, he had very speedily come to laugh at his own folly, and had recognized that the idea was altogether ridiculous. Upon her it had made so little impression that it had scarcely occurred to her when they met, that any passage of the sort had taken place, and had welcomed him as the lad she had known as a child, rather than as the man who had, under a passing impulse, asked her to marry him.

"I think," she said suddenly, "I will fetch Madame Michaud in. It will be nice for you to come here in the evening sometimes, and it would be better for her to ask you to do so than for me. These French people have such funny ideas."

"It would certainly be more pleasant," he agreed, "and evening will be the time that I have most leisure—that is to say, when we do not happen to be on duty, as to which I am very vague at present. They say the sailors will garrison the forts and the army take the outpost duty; but I fancy, when the Germans really surround us, it will be necessary to keep so strong a force outside the walls, that they will have to call out some of us in addition. The arrangement at present is, we are to drill in the morning and we shall paint in the afternoon; so the evening will be the only time when we shall be free."

"What do you do in the evening generally? You must find it very lonely."

"Not at all. I have an American who is in our school, and who lodges in the same house as I do. Then there are the students, a light-hearted, merry set of young fellows. We have little supper-parties and go to each other's rooms to chatter and smoke. Then, occasionally, I drop into the theatre. It is very much like the life I had in London, only a good deal more lively and amusing, and with a great deal less luxury and a very much smaller expenditure; and—this is very serious I can assure you—very much worse tobacco."

The girl laughed merrily.

"What will you do about smoking when you are reduced to the extremity you prophesy?"

"That point is, I confess, troubling me seriously. I look forward with very much greater dread to the prospect of having to smoke dried leaves and the sweepings of tobacco warehouses, than I do to the eating of rats. I have been making inquiries of all sorts as to the state of the stock of tobacco, and I intend this evening to invest five pounds in laying in a store; and mean to take up a plank and hide it under the floor, and to maintain the most profound secrecy as to its existence. There is no saying whether, as time goes on, it may not be declared an offence of the gravest character for any one to have a private store of any necessary. If you have any special weaknesses, such as chocolate or tea, or anything of that sort, I should advise you not to lose a moment in laying in a good stock. You will see in another week, when people begin to recognize generally what a siege means, that everything eatable will double in price, and in a month only millionaires will be able to purchase them."

"I really will buy some tea and chocolate," she said.

"Get in a good stock," he said. "Especially of chocolate. I am quite serious, I can assure you. Unfortunately, you have no place for keeping a sheep or two, or a bullock; and bread, at the end of a couple of months, could scarcely be eaten; but, really, I should advise you to invest in a dozen of those big square boxes of biscuits, and a ham or two may come in as a welcome addition some day."

Mary laughed incredulously, but she was much more inclined than before to look at matters seriously, when, on fetching Madame Michaud in, that lady, in the course of conversation, mentioned that her husband had that morning bought three sacks of flour and a hundred tins of preserved meats.

"He is going to get some boxes," she said, "and to have the flour emptied into them, then the baker will bring them round in a cart, so that no one will guess it is flour. He says it is likely that there will be an order issued that everything of that sort is to be given into a public store for general distribution, so it must be brought here quietly. He tells me that every one he knows is doing the same thing. My servant has been out this morning eight times and has been buying eggs. She has brought a hundred each time, and we are putting them in a cask in salt."

"Do you really think all that is necessary, madame?" Mary asked, doubtfully.

"Most certainly I do. They say everything will go up to such prices as never were heard of before. Of course, in a month or two the country will come to our rescue and destroy the Prussians, but till then we have got to live. Already eggs are fetching four times as much as they did last week. It is frightful to think of it, is it not, monsieur?"

"If I were in your place, madame, I would not reckon too surely on relief in a month. I think that there is no doubt that, as you say, there will be a prohibition of anyone keeping provisions of any sort, and everything will be thrown into the public magazines. Likely enough every house will be searched, and you cannot hide your things too carefully."

"But why should they insist on everything being put in public magazines?" Mary asked. "It will not go further that way than if people keep their own stocks and eat them."

"It will be necessary, if for nothing else, to prevent rioting when the pinch comes, and people are starving in the poorer quarters. You may be sure if they have a suspicion that the middle and upper classes have food concealed in their houses, they will break in and sack them. That would only be human nature, and therefore in the interest of order alone a decree forbidding anyone to have private stores would have to be passed; besides it would make the food go much further, for you may be sure that everything will be doled out in the smallest quantities sufficient to keep life together, and before the end of the siege comes each person may only get two or three ounces of bread a day."

Madame Michaud nodded as if prepared to be reduced even to that extremity.

"You are right, monsieur, I am going to get stuff and to make a great number of small bags to hold the flour; then we shall hide it away under the boards in many places, so that if they find some they may not find it all."

"The idea is a good one, madame, but it has its disadvantages. If they find one parcel they will search so closely everywhere that they will find the rest. For that reason one good hiding-place, if you could invent one, would be better than many."

"One does not know what is best to do," Madame Michaud said, with a gesture of tragic despair. "Who could have thought that such a thing could happen to Paris!"

"It is unexpected, certainly," Cuthbert agreed, "but it has been foreseen, otherwise they would never have taken the trouble to build this circle of forts round Paris. They are useful now not only in protecting the city but in covering a wide area, where the cattle and sheep may feed under the protection of the guns. I don't think we are as likely to be as badly off for meat as for bread, for after the flocks and herds are all eaten up there are the horses, and of these there must be tens of thousands in Paris."

"That is a comfort, certainly," the Frenchwoman said, calmly, while Mary Brander made a little gesture of disgust.

"I have never tried horseflesh myself, at least that I know of, but they say it is not so bad; but I cannot think that they will have to kill the horses for food. The country will not wait until we are reduced to that extremity."

"Mr. Hartington has joined one of the regiments of volunteers, Madame Michaud."

"That is good of you, monsieur; my husband is in the National Guard, and they say every one will have to take up a musket; but as you are a foreigner, of course this would not apply to you."

"Well, for the time being I consider myself a Parisian, and as a German shell is just as likely to fall on the roof of the house where I live as on any other, I consider myself to be perfectly justified in doing my best in self-defence."

"I trust that you will call whenever you are disposed in the evening, monsieur," Madame Michaud said, cordially; "it will give my husband pleasure to meet an English gentleman who is voluntarily going to fight in the cause of France."

"Thank you, madame. I shall be very glad to do so. Mademoiselle's father is a very old friend of our family, and I have known her ever since she was a little child. It will be pleasant to me to make the acquaintance of monsieur. And now, Miss Brander, I must be going."



CHAPTER VII.

As he sauntered back into the city, Cuthbert met an English resident with whom he had some slight acquaintance.

"So you are not among the great army of deserters, Mr. Phipson?"

"No, I thought it better to stay here and see it out. If the Germans come in I shall hang out the English flag and I have no doubt that it will be all right. If I go away the chances are that I should find the place sacked when I return."

"Then, of course, you will keep your place open."

"It will be closed to the public to-morrow—to the public, mind you. My English customers and friends, if they come to the little door in the Arcade, and give two knocks, and then three little ones with their knuckles on the door, will find it open, and can be served as long as there is any liquor left; but for the last three days I have been clearing out nearly all my stock. The demand has been tremendous, and I was glad enough to get rid of it, for even if the place isn't looted by the mob all the liquors might be seized by the authorities and confiscated for public use. I shall be glad when the doors are closed, I can tell you, for these people are enough to make one sick. The way they talk and brag sets my fingers itching, and I want to ask them to step into the back room, take off their coats, those uniforms they are so proud of, and stand up for a friendly round or two just to try what they are made of.

"I reckon if a chap can't take one on the nose and come up smiling, he would not be worth much when he has to stand up against the Prussians. I thought I understood them pretty well after having been coachman here for over twenty years, but I see now that I was wrong altogether. Of course I knew they were beggars to talk, but I always thought that there was something in it, and that if it came to fighting they would show up pretty well; but to hear them going on now as to what France will do and doing nothing themselves, gives one a sickener. Then the way as they blackguard the Emperor, who wasn't by any means a bad chap, puts my monkey up I can tell you. Why there is not one in fifty of them as is fit to black his boots. He had a good taste in horses too, he had; and when I hear them going on, it is as much as I can do not to slip in to them.

"That is one reason why I am stopping. A week ago I had pretty well made up my mind that I would go, but they made me so mad that I says to myself, I will stop and see it out, if it is only for the pleasure of seeing these fellows get the licking they deserve. I was out yesterday evening. There was every cafe crowded; there was the singing-places fuller than I ever saw them; there were drunken soldiers, who ought to have been with their regiments outside the walls, reeling about the streets. Any one as seed the place would have put it down that it was a great fete-day. As to the Prussians outside no one seemed to give them a thought. If you went from table to table you heard everyone saying that the Germans would be destroyed, and that every one who talked of peace now was a traitor."

"I quite agree with you," Cuthbert said, "they are most extraordinary people. Still I do think they will fight."

"Well, sir, I don't know whether you have heard the news that they have been licked this morning somewhere out near Clamart. I heard just now that a lot of the linesmen bolted and never stopped running till they got into Paris, but they say the Breton mobiles fought well, though they had to fall back at last."

"The troops are disorganized at present," Cuthbert said; "but when you see what a tremendous thrashing they have had it is hardly to be expected that they should fight with any confidence, but when discipline is restored and they have had a few skirmishes they will be different men altogether. As to the mobiles, they are mere peasants at present, but a month of hard work will turn them into soldiers, and I should say better soldiers than the linesmen; but I am afraid they will never make anything out of the National Guard. The only way to do so will be to establish big camps outside the walls and send them all out there and put strict army men in command, with a regiment of regulars in each camp to carry out their orders. It would be necessary, no doubt, to shoot a few hundred of them before anything like discipline could be established; and once a week the whole should be sent out to attack the Germans so as to teach them to be steady under fire. In that way they might be turned into decent soldiers."

"Lord bless you, sir, Government would never try that. There would be barricades in the streets in no time, and as the soldiers are all outside the walls the mob would upset the Government in a week."

"I am not at all saying it would do, but it is the only thing to make soldiers of them."

"Well, sir, you will know where to come when things get bad. I don't expect there will be any beer to be had, but I have been down with my son Bob into the cellar for the last four nights. I could not trust the French waiters, and we dug holes and have buried a couple of dozen kegs of my best spirits, so if they make a clear sweep of the rest I reckon we shall be able to keep that door open a goodish while."

"I shan't forget, and I hope that your spirits may escape the searchers, but you know just at present we are not popular in Paris. They have got an idea in their heads that we ought to have declared war against the Germans on their behalf; why, Heaven knows, but you may be sure that all the English places will be very strictly searched."

"Yes, I reckon on that, and we have got them twelve feet deep. It will be a job to get them out as we want them, but there won't be anything else to do and it will keep us in health."

Cuthbert had asked all the students to come in and smoke a pipe that evening in his room, and had ordered supper to be sent in.

"I am going to have it there instead of one of the usual places," he said, "because I don't think it is decent to be feasting in a public at a time like this. I expect it is about the last time we shall have anything like a supper. Things will be altogether beyond the reach of our purses in another week. Besides, I hope we shall be outside before long."

Arnold Dampierre was the first to come in.

"I am disgusted with the Parisians," he said, moodily.

"Well, yes, I am not surprised. It is not quite the spirit in which your people entered on their struggle, Dampierre."

"No, we meant it; the struggle with us was to get to the front. Why, do you know, I heard two or three of the National Guard grumbling in the highest state of indignation, and why, do you think? Because they had to sleep in the open air last night. Are these the men to defend a city? There will be trouble before long, Cuthbert. The workmen will not stand it; they have no faith in the Government nor in Trochu, nor in any one."

"Including themselves, I hope," Cuthbert smiled.

"They are in earnest. I have been up at——" and he hesitated, "Montmartre this afternoon, and they are furious there."

"They are fools," Cuthbert said, scornfully, "and no small proportion are knaves besides. They read those foul pamphlets and gloat over the abuse of every decently dressed person. They rave against the Prussians, but it is the Bourgeois they hate. They talk of fighting, while what they want is to sack and plunder."

"Nothing of the kind," the American said, hotly. "They want honesty and purity, and public spirit. They see vice more rampant than it was in the days of the Empire. They see the Bourgeois shirking their duty. They see license and extravagance everywhere."

"It is a pity they don't look at home," Cuthbert laughed good-temperedly. "I have not yet learnt that either purity or honesty, or a sense of duty are conspicuous at Montmartre or Belleville. There is just as much empty vaporing there as there is down the Boulevards. As to courage, they may have a chance presently of showing whether they have more of it than the better class. Personally, I should doubt it." Then he added more seriously, "My dear Dampierre, I can of course guess where you have learnt all this. I know that Minette's father is one of the firebrands of his quarter, and that since she has been earning an income here he has never done a stroke of work, but has taken up the profession of politician. I am not doubting his sincerity. He may be for aught I know perfectly in earnest, but it is his capacity I doubt. These uneducated men are able to see but one side of the question, and that is their own.

"I am not at all blind to the danger. I believe it is possible that we are going to have another red revolution. Your men at Belleville and Montmartre are capable of repeating the worst and most terrible features of that most awful time, but you know what came of it and how it ended. Even now some of these blackguard prints are clamoring for one man to take the supreme control of everything. So far there are no signs of that coming man, but doubtless, in time, another Bonaparte may come to the front and crush down disorder with an iron heel; but that will not be until the need for a saviour of society is evident to all. I hope, my dear fellow, you will not be carried away with these visionary ideas. I can, of course, understand your predilections for a Republic, but between your Republic and the Commune, for which the organs of the mob are already clamoring, there is no shadow of resemblance. They are both founded, it is true, on the will of the majority, but in the States it is the majority of an educated and distinctly law-abiding people—here it is the majority of men who would set the law at defiance, who desire power simply for the purposes of spoliation."

Dampierre would have replied angrily, but at this moment the door opened and two or three of the other students entered.

"Have you heard about that affair at Clamart," they demanded eagerly. "They say the line behaved shamefully, and that Trochu declares they shall be decimated."

"You may be quite sure that if he said so he will not carry it out," Cuthbert said. "The army has to be kept in a good humor, and at any rate until discipline is fully restored it would be too dangerous a task to venture on punishing cowardice. It is unfortunate certainly, but things will get better in time. You can hardly expect to make the fugitives of a beaten army into heroes all at once. I have not the least doubt that if the Germans made an attack in full force they would meet with very slight resistance; but they won't do that. They will go to work in a regular and steady way. They will erect batteries, commanding every road out of the town, and will then sit down and starve us out, hastening the process, perhaps, by a bombardment. But all that will take time. There will be frequent fighting at the outposts, and if Trochu and the rest of them make the most of the material they have at hand, poor as much of it is, they will be able to turn out an army that should be strong enough to throw itself upon any point in the German line and break its way out; but it must be an army of soldiers, not a force composed of disheartened fugitives and half-drilled citizens."

"The National Guard are drilling earnestly," Rene Caillard said. "I have been watching them this afternoon, they really made a very good show."

"The father of a family with a comfortable home and a prosperous business can drill as well as the most careless vaurien, Rene; better, perhaps, for he will take much greater pains; but when it comes to fighting, half a dozen reckless daredevils are worth a hundred of him. I think if I had been Trochu I would have issued an order that every unmarried man in Paris between the ages of sixteen and forty-five should be organized into, you might call it, the active National Guard for continual service outside the walls, while the married men should be reserved for defending the enceinte at the last extremity. The outside force might be but a third of the whole, but they would be worth as much as the whole force together. That is why I think that our corps may distinguish itself. We have none of us wives or families and nothing much to lose, consequently we shall fight well. We shan't mind hardships for we have not been accustomed to luxuries. We are fighting as volunteers and not because the law calls us under arms.

"We are educated and have got too much self-respect to bolt like rabbits. I don't say we may not retire. One can't do impossibilities, and if others don't stand, we can't oppose a Prussian Army Corps. There is one thing you must do, and that is preserve good discipline. There is no discipline at all in the National Guard. I saw a party of them yesterday drilling, and two or three of them quietly marched out of the ranks and remonstrated on terms of the most perfect equality, with their colonel as to an order he had given. The maxim of the Republic may do for civil life, though I have not a shadow of belief either in equality or fraternity; nor have I in liberty when liberty means license; whether that be so or not equality is not consistent with military discipline. An army in which the idea of equality reigns is not an army but a mob, and is no more use for fighting purposes than so many armed peasants. The Shibboleth is always absurd and in a case like the present ruinous. The first duty of a soldier is obedience, absolute and implicit, and a complete surrender of the right of private judgment."

"And you would obey an officer if you were sure that he were wrong, Cuthbert?"

"Certainly I would. I might, if the mistake did not cost me my life, argue the matter out with him afterwards, if, as might happen among us, we were personal acquaintances; but I should at the same time carry out the order, whatever it might be, to the best of my power. And now I propose that for this evening we avoid the subject of the siege altogether. In future, engaged as we are likely to be, we shall hardly be able to avoid it, and moreover the bareness of the table and the emptiness of the wine-cups will be a forcible reminder that it will be impossible to escape it. Did you show Goude your sketch for your picture for the Salon, Rene?"

"I did, after you had all gone, and I have not got over the interview yet. His remarks on the design, conception, and the drawing were equally clear and decisive. He more than hinted that I was a hopeless idiot, that the time he had given me was altogether wasted, that I had mistaken my avocation, and that if the Germans knocked me on the head it would be no loss either to myself or to society in general. It is true that after he had finished he cooled down a bit and made a number of suggestions from which I gathered that if the whole thing were altered, my idea of the background altogether changed, the figures differently posed, the effect of light and shade diametrically reversed, and a few other trifling alterations made, the thing might possibly be hung on the top line. Ma foi, I feel altogether crushed, for I had really flattered myself that the sketch was not altogether without merit."

When the laugh had subsided Cuthbert said—

"Courage, Rene, Goude's bark is always worse than his bite, and I have no doubt he will take a much more favorable view of it as you get on."

"It is all very well for you to say so," Rene said, ruefully. "You are a spoiled child, Goude has never a word of reproof for you."

"Probably because he knows very well that I shall not break my heart over it. We must hold a committee of inspection on your work to-morrow; none of us have seen your design yet, and we may be able between us to make some useful suggestion."

"No, no," Rene exclaimed. "Heaven protect me from that. Do you come, Cuthbert; none of us mind what you say about our pictures. Your criticisms do not hurt. One would no more think of being angry with you for using your knife than with a surgeon for performing an operation."

"Very well, Rene, I will come round early. I have no doubt your sketch is a very good one on the whole, and after a few little changes it will satisfy even Goude. By the way, have you heard we are to elect our company officers to-morrow?"

"Will you stand? I am sure you would have all our votes—that is twenty-five to start with, and as we know most of the fellows in the company we certainly could secure all those who have not any candidate they want to run; besides, there are, of course, to be three officers, so we should be able to traffic votes."

"No officering for me," Cuthbert laughed. "In the first place I have no greater qualifications for the post than anyone else, and in the second place, I am English, and though I might be elected—thanks to your votes—I should never be liked or trusted; besides, I have not a shadow of ambition that way. I am going to fight if necessary. I shall have my note-book in my pocket, and I have no doubt that when we are lying waiting for our turn to come, I shall have lots of opportunities for jotting down little bits that will work into the great battle picture which is to have the place of honor some day in the Salon. I think it will certainly be pleasant to have one of our own number among the officers, and I propose that each of us puts down on a slip of paper the name of the man he thinks will make the best leader and throw it into a hat; then, whoever gets the most votes, we will all support, and, as you say, by a little traffic in the votes, we ought to be able to get him in among the three."

"Are you absolutely determined not to stand?"

"Absolutely and positively. So please do not any of you put my name down, two or three votes thrown away like that might alter the decision."

He tore up a sheet of paper into small slips and passed them round.

"Before we begin to write," he said, "let it be understood that no one is to vote for himself. I don't mind telling you who I am going to vote for. It is Henri Vancour. This is a matter in which it should be no question of personal liking. We should choose the man who appears to us best fitted for the post."

The name came as a surprise upon the others, for Henri was one of the last whom it would have occurred to them to choose. Pencils were already in their hands and they were on the point of writing when he spoke, and almost all would have given their votes either for Rene Caillard or Pierre Leroux, who were the two most popular men among the party. There was a pause for some little time before the pencils went to work.

They had not thought of Henri, but now they did think of him they acknowledged to themselves that there was a good deal to be said in his favor. He was a Norman—quiet, hard-working, and even-tempered. His voice was seldom heard in the chorus of jokes and laughter, but when asked for an opinion he gave it at once concisely and decidedly. He was of medium height and squarely built. His face was cast in a rough mould and an expression of resolution and earnestness was predominant. He had never joined either in the invective against the Emperor, or in the confident anticipations of glorious successes over the Germans.

He listened but said nothing, and when questioned would reply, "Let us see some one do better than the Emperor before we condemn him. We will hope for the best, but so far predictions have been so wrong that it would be better to wait and see before we blow our trumpets." He had but little genius, this young Norman, but he had perseverance and power.

M. Goude scolded him less than others with far greater talent, and had once said, "you will never be a great painter, Henri. I doubt if you will ever be in the first line, but you will take a good place in the second. You will turn out your pictures regularly and the work will always be good and solid. You may not win any great prizes, but your work will be esteemed, and in the end you will score as heavily as some of those who possess real genius."

Yes, Henri was, they all felt, now they thought it over, one they could rely upon. He would not lose his head, he would be calm in danger, as he was calm at all other times, and he certainly would show no lack of courage. Accordingly when the papers were opened he was found to have received a considerable majority of the votes.

"Thank you for choosing me, comrades," he said, quietly. "I can only say that if elected I will do my best. A man can't say more than that. Why you should have fixed upon me I cannot think, but that is your business. I think I can promise at any rate that I won't run away."

When the Franc-tireurs des Ecoles assembled the next morning, half an hour was given for consultation; then the vote was taken, and Henri Vancour was declared elected first Lieutenant of the company composed entirely of the art students, the Captain being Francois des Valles, who belonged to an old provincial family, a tall, dark, handsome young man, extremely popular among his comrades.

"I think he will do very well," Cuthbert said, as the company fell in. "There is no fear of his leaving us when under fire; his failing, if he has one, will be that he may want to keep us there too long. It is quite as necessary when you are fighting by the side of fellows who are not to be relied on, to know when to retreat as it is to know when to advance."