Metzerott asserted that the boy brought him good luck, and certainly his trade had greatly improved; but prosperity had rather a hardening than a softening effect, since it had come too late to save his wife. And still he poured out all his anger, grief, and hardness of heart to little Louis, and felt, perhaps, gentler and more forgiving for the telling, like King David when he had cried to God in the Psalms for vengeance on his enemies. CHAPTER VII. “’VIDING.” “Papa!” said Louis, one autumn evening. The child, just five years old, was perched, as usual, upon his father’s knee, his golden head nestled against his father’s breast. They were an oddly contrasted pair; Metzerott, with his powerful, yet apparently clumsy frame, brown, rugged face, and hair just beginning—though he was not yet forty years old—to be touched with gray, while Louis had his mother’s face, refined and spiritualized into absolute loveliness. His grave blue eyes could be merry enough at times; but as he lifted them now to his father’s face, there was a solemn purity in their gaze, at sight of which Metzerott drew the boy closer to his breast, in a sudden, irrational terror of losing him. “Well,” he said. “Papa, why did my mamma die?” He spoke a baby patois, half English, half German, which we should vainly attempt to reproduce. “Because we are poor, my son, and were even poorer then. If your mother could have been nursed and done for, like a rich lady with plenty of money and crowds of servants, she would have been alive now. Money, my boy, was the medicine she needed.” “If I were President,” said Louis after a thoughtful pause, “I would make more money, so that every one might have enough.” Metzerott smiled, even while he shook his head. “There’s money enough, or so people say, and making more would only lower the value of what there is. That was tried during the war, Louis. The trouble is that all the money is in too few hands. Some have more than enough, and others have nothing. As if I should eat all the dinner, you know, and leave none for you.” “You wouldn’t do that,” said Louis confidently. “Nor the millionnaires sha’n’t much longer,” said Metzerott. “When we get the Commune, Louis, every man who has more than he needs—yes, and we’ll cut his ‘needs’ down pretty close, too—will have to divide with his poor neighbors.” “What is ‘’vide’?” asked Louis, who had often heard of the Commune. Metzerott showed him practically, by means of a box of lead soldiers that had been given to the child that day, and which was cherished fondly in one chubby arm. “Now,” said the shoemaker, arranging these in two files upon his mother’s old candle-stand, which stood at his elbow, “now, if you were to give half of these to George Rolf, and keep this row for yourself, that would be dividing with him.” “I fink,” said Louis, “I don’t like ’viding.”