While I am blowing rings through the grape leaves
over my head a quick noise is heard across the stream. Lucette runs past
me through the garden, picking up her oars as she goes.
"_Oui, mon pere._ I am coming."
It is monsieur from his day's work in the city.
"Who is here?" I hear him say as he mounts the terrace steps. "Oh, the
painter--good!"
"Ah, _mon ami_. So you must see the willows once more. Have you not
tired of them yet?" Then, seating himself, "I hope madame has taken good
care of you. What, the '62? Ah, I remember I told you."
When it is quite dark he joins me under the leaves, bringing a second
bottle a little better corked he thinks, and the talk drifts into his
early life.
"What year was that, monsieur?" I asked.
"In 1849. I was a young fellow just grown. I had learned my trade in
Rheims, and I had come down to Paris to make my bread. Two years later
came the little affair of December 2. That 'nobody,' Louis, had
dissolved the National Assembly and the Council of State, and had issued
his address to the army. Paris was in a ferment. By the help of his
soldiers and police he had silenced every voice in Paris except his own.
He had suppressed all the journals, and locked up everybody who had
opposed him. Victor Hugo was in exile, Louis Blanc in London,
Changarnier and Cavaignac in prison. At the moment I was working in a
little shop near the Porte St. Martin decorating lacquerwork. We workmen
all belonged to a secret society which met nightly in a back room over a
wine-shop near the Rue Royale.
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