Pear-shaped Devignes was easy to deceive: the opera-singer lived too well to want to believe that anybody in the world could starve. Garnier, the cadaverous poet, saved trouble, indulging his dislike of other people's poverty by remaining away from it; but Seraphin, who came often and sat about the studio in a silence wholly uncharacteristic, was difficult. Houdon, finally, was frequent and expensive: he always foraged about what he called Cartaret's "tempting window-buffet," but he regarded the condition of affairs as the passing foible of a young man temporarily wearied by the pleasures of wealth. "Ah," he snorted one day when he had come in with Varachon, "you fail wholly to deceive me, Cartarette. You say you are not well-to-do so that we shall think that you are not, but I know, I! Had you not your own income, you would try to sell more pictures, and your pictures are superb. They would fetch a pretty sum. Believe not that because I have a great musical genius I have no eye for painting. I know good painting. All Arts are one, my brother." He jabbed Cartaret's empty stomach and, whistling a theme and twisting his little mustache, went to the window and took a huge bite of the last apple there. Cartaret watched the composer toss half the apple into the concierge's garden. Varachon, the sculptor, grunted through his broken nose. "Your work is bad," he whispered to Cartaret--"very bad. You require a long rest. Go to Nice for a month." The weeks passed. Cartaret was underfed and discouraged. He was too discouraged now to attempt to renew his acquaintance with the Lady of the Rose. He was pale and thin, and this from reasons wholly physical. Meanwhile, through the scented dawns, April was coming up to that city in which April is most beautiful and most seductive. From the spicy Mediterranean coasts, along the Valley of the Rhone, Love was dancing upon Paris with laughing Spring for his partner. Already the trees had blossomed between the Place de La Concorde and the Rond Point, and out in the Bois the birds were singing to their mates. One morning, when Cartaret, with unsteady hand, drew back his curtain, _rouge-gorges_ were calling from the concierge's garden, and seemed to be calling to him. "Seize hold of love!" they chorused in that garden. "Life is short; time flies, and love flies with it. Love will pass you by. Take it, take it, take it, while there still is time! Like us, it is a bird that flies, but, unlike us, it never more returns. It is a rose that withers--a white rose: take it while it blooms. Take it, though it leave you soon; take it, though it scratch your fingers. Take it, take it, take it now!" On that day the annual siege of Paris ended, the city fell before her invaders, and by the time that Cartaret went into the streets, the army of occupation was in possession. The Luxembourg Gardens, the very benches along the Boul' Miche' were full of lovers: he could not stir from the house without encountering them.