at five years of age as this Maria? She took the arm of Amedee, whom she
called her little husband, and went to call upon her sister and show her
her little child, a pasteboard doll with a large head, wrapped up in a
napkin.

"As you see, Madame, it is a boy."

"What do you intend to make of him when he grows up?" asked Louise, who
lent herself complacently to the play, for she was ten years old and
quite a young lady, if you please.

"Why, Madame," replied Maria, gravely, "he will be a soldier."

At that moment the engraver, who had left his bench to stretch his legs a
little and to light his Abd-el-Kader for the third time, came and stood
at the threshold of his room. Madame Gerard, reassured as to the state
of her stew, which was slowly cooking--and oh, how good it smelled in the
kitchen!--entered the dining-room. Both looked at the children, so
comical and so graceful, as they made their little grimaces! Then the
husband glanced at his wife, and the wife at the husband, and both burst
out into hearty laughter.

There never was any laughter in the apartment of the Violettes. It was
cough! cough! cough! almost to suffocation, almost to death! This gentle
young woman with the heavy hair was about to die! When the beautiful
starry evenings should come again, she would no longer linger on the
balcony, or press her husband's hand as they gazed at the stars. Little
Amedee did not understand it; but he felt a vague terror of something
dreadful happening in the house. Everything alarmed him now. He was
afraid of the old woman who smelled of snuff, and who, when she dressed