was now the constant companion of Elodie who certainly got on amicably with her step-mothers. "Where is Elodie?" asked the _citoyenne_ Chassagne. Jean Blaise shook his head; he did not know. He never did know; he made it a point of honour not to. Julie had come to take her friend with her to see Rose Thevenin at Monceaux, where the actress lived in a little house with an English garden. At the Conciergerie Rose Thevenin had made the acquaintance of a big army-contractor, the _citoyen_ Montfort. She had been released first, by Jean Blaise's intervention, and had then procured the _citoyen_ Montfort's pardon, who was no sooner at liberty than he started his old trade of provisioning the troops, to which he added speculation in building-lots in the Pepiniere quarter. The architects Ledoux, Olivier and Wailly were erecting pretty houses in that district, and in three months the land had trebled in value. Montfort, since their imprisonment together in the Luxembourg, had been Rose Thevenin's lover; he now gave her a little house in the neighbourhood of Tivoli and the Rue du Rocher, which was very expensive,--and cost him nothing, the sale of the adjacent properties having already repaid him several times over. Jean Blaise was a man of the world, so he deemed it best to put up with what he could not hinder; he gave up Mademoiselle Thevenin to Montfort without ceasing to be on friendly terms with her. Julie had not been long at the _Amour peintre_ before Elodie came down to her in the shop, looking like a fashion plate. Under her mantle, despite the rigours of the season, she wore nothing but her white frock; her face was even paler than of old, and her figure thinner; her looks were languishing, and her whole person breathed voluptuous invitation. The two women set off for Rose Thevenin's, who was expecting them. Desmahis accompanied them; the actress was consulting him about the decoration of her new house and he was in love with Elodie, who had by this time half made up her mind to let him sigh no more in vain. When the party came near Monceaux, where the victims of the Place de la Revolution lay buried under a layer of lime: "It is all very well in the cold weather," remarked Julie; "but in the spring the exhalations from the ground there will poison half the town."