As he reached the corner of the street, Gamelin caught sight of the _citoyenne_ Dumonteil, seated on a stone post, her nursling in her arms. She sat there quite still; her face was colourless and her tearless eyes seemed to see nothing. The infant was sucking her finger voraciously. Gamelin stood a while in front of her, abashed and uncertain what to do. She did not appear to see him. He stammered something, then pulled out his pocket-knife, a clasp-knife with a horn handle, cut his loaf in two and laid half on the young mother's knee. She looked up at him in wonder; but he had already turned the corner of the street. On reaching home, Evariste found his mother sitting at the window darning stockings. With a light laugh he put his half of the bread in her hand. "You must forgive me, mother dear; I was tired out with standing about and exhausted by the heat, and out in the street there as I trudged home, mouthful by mouthful I have gobbled up half of our allowance. There's barely your share left,"--and as he spoke, he made a pretence of shaking the crumbs off his jacket. FOOTNOTES: [1] _Chambre Ardente_,--under the ancien regime, a tribunal charged with the investigation of heinous crimes and having power to burn those found guilty. VII Employing a very old-fashioned locution, the _citoyenne_ Gamelin had declared: "that by dint of eating chestnuts they would be turning into chestnuts." As a matter of fact, on that day, the 13th July, she and her son had made their midday dinner on a basin of chestnut porridge. As they were finishing this austere repast, a lady pushed open the door and the room was flooded in an instant with the splendour of her presence and the fragrance of her perfumes. Evariste recognised the _citoyenne_ Rochemaure. Thinking she had mistaken the door and meant her visit for the _citoyen_ Brotteaux, her friend of other days, he was already preparing to point her out the _ci-devant_ aristocrat's garret or perhaps summon Brotteaux and so spare an elegant woman the task of scrambling up a mill-ladder; but she made it clear at once that the _citoyen_ Evariste Gamelin and no other was the person she had come to see by announcing that she was happy to find him at home and was his servant to command. They were not entirely strangers to each other, having met more than once in David's studio, in a box at the Assembly Hall, at the Jacobins, at Venua's restaurant. On these occasions she had been struck by his good looks and youth and interesting air.