February came in dreary, and bleak, and went out in torrents of rain. For Aline de Rochambeau a time of dull loneliness, and reaction, of hard grinding work, and insufficient food. She had to rise early, and stand in a line with other women, before she could receive the meagre dole of bread, which was all that the Republic One and Indivisible would guarantee its starving citizens. Then home again, faint and weary, to sit long hours, bent to catch the last, ultimate ray of dreary light, working fingers sore, and tired eyes red, over the fine embroidery for which she was so thankful still to find a sale. All these wasted morning hours had to be made up for in the dusk and dark of the still wintry evenings. With hands stiff and blue, she must thread the fine needle, and hold the delicate fabric, working on, and on, and on. She did not sing at her work now, and the silence lay mournfully upon her heart. "No tread on the stair, no passing step across the way. What slow, long days—what empty, halting evenings." Rosalie eyed her with a half-contemptuous pity in those days, but times were too hard for the pity to be more than a passing indulgence, and she turned to her own comfortable meals without a pang. Times were hard, and many suffered—what could one do? "For me, I do not see that things are changed so wonderfully," sighed brown little Madeleine Rousse, Rosalie’s neighbour. Mlle de Rochambeau and she were standing elbow to elbow, waiting for the baker to open his doors, and begin the daily distribution. "We were hungry before, and we are hungry now. Bread is as scarce, and the only difference is that there are more mouths to feed." Her small face was pinched and drawn, and she sighed heavily, thinking of five clamouring children at home. "Eh, Madeleine," cried Louison Michel, wife of that redoubtable Septembrist, Jean, the butcher. "Eh, be thankful that your last was not twins, as mine was. There was a misfortune, if you like, and I with six already! And what does that great stupid oaf of mine say but, ’Hé, Louison, what a pity it was not three!’ ’Pity,’ said I, and if I had been up and about, I warrant you I ’d have clouted him well; ’pity, indeed, and why?’ Well, and what do you think—you ’d never guess. ’Oh,’ says he, with a great sheep’s grin on his face, ’we might have called them Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.’ And there he stood as if he had said something clever. My word! If I was angry! ’The charming idea, my friend,’ I said. ’I who have to work for them, whilst you make speeches at your section, what of me? Take that, and that,’ said I, and I threw what was handy at him—Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, indeed!" Madeleine sighed again, but an impudent-faced girl behind Aline whispered in her ear, "Jean Michel has one tyrant from whom the Republic cannot free him!"