The engraver's house was always full of good-nature and gayety, and Amedee felt comfortable and really happy there.
The good Gerards, besides their Louise and Maria, to say nothing of Amedee, whom they looked upon as one of the family, had now taken charge of a fourth child, a little girl, named Rosine, who was precisely the same age as their youngest.
This was the way it happened.

Above the Gerards, in one of the mansards upon the sixth floor, lived a printer named Combarieu, with his wife or mistress--the concierge did not know which, nor did it matter much.

The woman had just deserted him, leaving a child of eight years.

One could expect nothing better of a creature who, according to the concierge, fed her husband upon pork-butcher's meat, to spare herself the trouble of getting dinner, and passed the entire day with uncombed hair, in a dressing-sacque, reading novels, and telling her fortune with cards.
The grocer's daughter declared she had met her one evening, at a dancing-hall, seated with a fireman before a salad-bowl full of wine, prepared in the French fashion.
During the day Combarieu, although a red-hot Republican, sent his little girl to the Sisters; but he went out every evening with a mysterious air and left the child alone.

The concierge even uttered in a low voice, with the romantic admiration which that class of people have for conspirators, the terrible word "secret society," and asserted that the printer had a musket concealed under his straw bed.
These revelations were of a nature to excite M.Gerard's sympathy in favor of his neighbor, for the coup d'etat and the proclamation of the Empire had irritated him very much.