He worked hard all day; with an expensive house and two girls to bring up, it was necessary.

In spite of his advanced opinions, he continued to engrave his Prince Louis--"A rogue who is trying to juggle us out of a Republic." At the very most, he stopped only two or three times a day to smoke his Abu-el-Kader.

Nothing distracted him from his work; not even the little ones, who, tired of playing their piece for four hands upon the piano, would organize, with Amedee, a game of hide-and-seek close by their father, behind the old Empire sofa ornamented with bronze lions' heads.

But Madame Gerard, in her kitchen, where she was always cooking something good for dinner, sometimes thought they made too great an uproar.

Then Maria, a real hoyden, in trying to catch her sister, would push an old armchair against a Renaissance chest and make all the Rouen crockery tremble.
"Now then, now then, children!" exclaimed Madame Gerard, from the depths of her lair, from which escaped a delicious odor of bacon.