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"There," she said, pointing to a clump of firs, "I should like to raise a cenotaph to the memory of the unfortunate Brotteaux des Ilettes. I was not indifferent to him; he was a lovable man. The monsters slaughtered him; I bewailed his fate. Desmahis, you shall design me an urn on a column."
Philippe Desmahis was at work before a pigeon-cote in the picaresque manner of Callot and Duplessis. Old Brotteaux who piqued himself on imitating the Flemings, was drawing a cow with infinite care. Élodie was sketching a peasant's hut, while her friend Julienne, who was a colourman's daughter, set her palette.
Meanwhile, from every eating-house and restaurateur's voices could be heard singing: Peuple français, peuple de frères!... "Good-bye," said Élodie, jumping out of the cabriolet. But Desmahis begged so hard, he was so tenderly urgent and spoke so sweetly, that she had not the heart to leave him at the door. "It is late," she said; "you must only stay an instant."
I venture to think my cards are drawn with some spirit; I propose to have them engraved on copper by Desmahis, and to take out letters of patent." So saying and extracting from his portfolio some finished designs in water-colour, the artist handed them to the printseller.
The artist's picaresque burin had made Robespierre as hideous as possible. The French people were not yet satiated with all the memorials which enshrined the horror and opprobrium felt for the man who was made scapegoat of all the crimes of the Revolution. For all that, the printseller, who knew his public, informed Desmahis that henceforward he was going to give him military subjects to engrave.
The company got in again, and as they drove on, Desmahis informed the coachman that in this same plain of Longjumeau several inhabitants of the Moon had once come down, in shape and colour much like frogs, only very much bigger. Philippe Dubois and Gamelin talked about their art.
Regardless of his indignant protests, they would have haled him to the town-hall, had not old Brotteaux, Gamelin, and the three young women borne testimony that the citoyen was named Philippe Desmahis, a copper-plate engraver and a good Jacobin. Even then the suspect had to show his carte de civisme, which he had in his pocket by great good luck, for he was very heedless in such matters.
"I unmasked him, on this very spot, when his sanguinary instincts were still held in check. He never forgave me.... Oh! he was a choice blackguard." "Poor fellow! he was sincere enough. It was the fanatics were his ruin." "You don't defend him, I presume, Desmahis!... There's no defending him." "No, citoyen Blaise, there's no defending him."
We will publish for ourselves the new patriotic toy and we are sure to sell ten thousand packs in a month, at twenty sols apiece." In his impatience to realize the project, he strode off at once for the Quai de la Ferraille, where Desmahis lived over a glazier's shop. The entrance was through the shop.
The glazier's wife informed Gamelin that the citoyen Desmahis was not in, a fact that in no wise surprised the painter, who knew his friend was of a vagabond and dissipated humour and who marvelled that a man could engrave so much and so well as he did while showing so little perseverance. Gamelin made up his mind to wait a while for his return and the woman offered him a chair.
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