"Of course not," Rene exclaimed indignantly. "You don't suppose that after the murder of the generals any decent Frenchman would join such a cause, even if he were favorable to its theories. Morbleu! Although I hate tyrants I should be tempted to take up a rifle and go out and defend them were they menaced by such scum as this. It is not even as it was before; then it was the middle class who made the Revolution, and there was at least much that was noble in their aims, but these creatures who creep out from their slums like a host of obnoxious beasts animated sorely by hatred for all around them, and by a lust for plunder and blood, they fill one with loathing and disgust. There is not among them, save Dampierre, a single man of birth and education, if only perhaps you except Rochefort. There are plenty of Marats, but certainly no Mirabeau. "No, no, Cuthbert, we of the studio may be wild and thoughtless. We live gayly and do not trouble for the morrow, but we are not altogether fools; and even were there nothing else to unite us against the Commune, the squalor and wretchedness, the ugliness and vice, the brutal coarseness, and the foul language of these ruffians would band us together as artists against them. Now, enough of Paris, what have you been doing in England, besides recovering your health?" "I have been recovering a fortune, too, Rene. A complicated question concerning some property that would, in the ordinary course of things, have come to me has now been decided in my favor." "I congratulate you," Rene said, "but you will not give up art, I hope?" "No, I intend to stick to that, Rene. You see I was not altogether dependent on it before, so that circumstances are not much changed." "You finished your pictures before you went away, did you not? The temptation to have a peep at them has been very strong, but I have resisted--nobly it was heroic, was it not?" "It must have been. Yes, I put the finishing touches to them before I went away, and now I will show them to you Rene; it is the least I can do after all your kindness. Now go and look out of the window until I fix the easels in a good light, I want your first impressions to be favorable. There," after a pause, "the curtain is drawn up and the show has begun." He spoke lightly, but there was an undertone of anxiety in his voice. Hitherto no one but Mary had seen them, and her opinion upon the subject of art was of little value. He, himself, believed that the work was good, but yet felt that vague dissatisfaction and doubt whether it might not have been a good deal better, that most artists entertain as to their own work. In the school Rene's opinion was always sought for eagerly; there were others who painted better, but none whose feeling of art was more true or whose critical instinct keener.