Saccard, who for a moment had believed in some diabolical resurrection, invented by destiny to keep him in poverty, became reassured on seeing that the wretched woman had scarcely another hour to live. His other feelings gave way to one of intolerable uneasiness. Angèle's eyes said plainly enough that she had overheard the conversation between her husband and Madame Sidonie, and that she feared he would strangle her if she did not die quick enough. And her eyes were also full of the horrible amazement of a gentle and inoffensive nature which learns at the last moment the infamies of this world, and shudders at the thought of having passed years side by side with a bandit. By degrees her look became more kind; she was no longer frightened, she no doubt found excuses for the wretch as she recollected the desperate struggle he had been maintaining so long against fate. Followed by the dying woman's gaze, in which he read such bitter reproach, Saccard clung to the furniture for support, and sought the darkest corner of the room. Then, feeling on the point of fainting, he tried to drive away this nightmare which was maddening him, and advanced into the light of the lamp. But Angèle motioned him not to speak, and she continued looking at him with that air of terror-stricken anguish, to which was now joined a promise of pardon. Then he stooped to take up Clotilde in his arms and carry her into the other room. She again forbade him with a movement of her lips. She insisted upon his remaining where he was. She slowly passed away, not once removing her gaze from him, and as he paled beneath it, this gaze grew more and more benign. She forgave with her last sigh. She died as she had lived, tamely; her diffidence in life attending her till death. Saccard stood shivering before the dead woman's eyes, which remained wide open, and transfixed him by their very immobility. Little Clotilde nursed her doll on the edge of the sheet, very gently though, so as not to wake her mother.

When Madame Sidonie got back it was all over. Like a woman in the habit of performing such operations, she deftly closed Angèle's eyes with a touch of her fingers, and this was an immense relief to Saccard. Then, after putting the little girl to bed, she quickly arranged the room as befits the chamber of death. When she had lighted two candles on the chest of drawers, and carefully drawn the sheet up to the chin of the corpse, she cast a satisfied glance around her, and ensconced herself in an easy-chair, where she dozed till daybreak. Saccard passed the night in the adjoining room, writing letters announcing his wife's death. He interrupted himself now and again, musing and adding up columns of figures on odd bits of paper.

On the evening of the day of the funeral, Madame Sidonie took Saccard to her apartment on the mezzanine floor, and grand resolutions were formed there. The civil servant decided that he would send little Clotilde to one of his brothers, Pascal Rougon, a doctor at Plassans, who led a bachelor life, wrapt up in the love of science, and who had often offered to take his niece to live with him to enliven his silent home. Madame Sidonie then made Saccard understand that he could no longer sojourn in the Rue Saint-Jacques. She would take an elegantly furnished apartment for him for a month, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Hôtel de Ville; she would try to find this apartment in a private house, so that the furniture should appear to belong to him. As to the chattels in the Rue Saint-Jacques, they should all be sold, so as to efface every trace of the past. He could use the money in buying himself a trousseau and some decent clothes.

Three days later, Clotilde was handed over to an old lady who it so happened was just starting for the South. And Aristide Saccard, triumphant and rosy-cheeked, looking fattened up in three days by the first smiles of fortune, occupied in a quiet and respectable house in the Rue Payenne, situated in the Marais quarter, a charming floor of five rooms through which he wandered with embroidered slippers on his feet. They were the apartments of a young abbé who had been suddenly called to Italy, and who had instructed his servant to let the rooms during his absence. This servant was a friend of Madame Sidonie's, who rather fancied the cloth; she loved priests with the same love that she showered on women, through instinct, no doubt establishing a certain nervous relationship between cassocks and silk skirts. From that time Saccard was ready; he arranged the part he was to play with exquisite art; he awaited without betraying the least emotion the difficulties and niceties of the situation which he had accepted.

On the dreadful evening when Angèle died, Madame Sidonie had faithfully told in a few words the misfortune which had overtaken the Bérauds. The father, Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel, a fine old man of sixty, was the last representative of an ancient middle-class family, who could trace their origin much farther back than many a noble house. One of his ancestors was a companion of Étienne Marcel. In 1793 his father perished on the scaffold, after saluting the Republic with all the enthusiasm of a Paris citizen, in whose veins flowed the revolutionary blood of the city. He himself was one of those Spartan republicans who dream of a government of full justice and wise liberty. Grown old in the magistracy, where he had contracted quite a professional stiffness and severity, he resigned his post of presiding judge in 1851, at the time of the Coup d'État, after refusing to be a member of one of those mixed commissions which dishonoured French justice.

Since that time he had been living, solitary and retired, in his mansion on the Île Saint-Louis, situated at the extremity of the island, almost opposite the mansion of the Lamberts. His wife had died young. Some secret drama, the wound from which still remained unhealed, probably added to the gloom of the judge's grave countenance. He was already the father of a girl of eight, Renée, when his wife expired on giving birth to a second daughter. This latter, who was named Christine, was taken care of by a sister of Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel's, the wife of Aubertot the notary. Renée was sent to a convent. Madame Aubertot, who had no child of her own, was filled with quite a maternal affection for Christine, whom she brought up herself. Her husband dying, she took the little one back to her father, and remained between the silent old man and his smiling fair-haired daughter. Renée was forgotten at her school. During the holidays she filled the house with such an uproar that her aunt heaved a great sigh of relief when she at length escorted her back to the ladies of the Visitation, where the child had been a boarder since she was eight years old. She did not leave the convent for good until she was nineteen, and then she went to pass the summer at the home of her friend Adeline, whose parents owned a beautiful estate in the Nivernais. When she came back in October, her Aunt Élisabeth was surprised to find her very grave and profoundly sad. One evening she discovered her stifling her sobs in the pillow, writhing on her bed in an attack of mad grief. In the misery of her despair the child told her a most heart-rending story: a man of forty, rich, married, and whose wife, a young and charming person, was also staying at the house, had violated her during her visit in the country, without her daring or knowing how to defend herself.

This confession terrified Aunt Élisabeth; she accused herself, as though she had felt she were an accomplice; she regretted her preference for Christine, and could not help thinking that, if she had also kept Renée beside her, the poor child would not have succumbed. Henceforward, to drive away that bitter remorse which her tender nature still further exaggerated, she did her best to sustain the erring one; she bore the brunt of the father's anger when they both apprised him of the horrible truth by the very excess of their precautions; in the bewilderment of her solicitude she invented that strange project of marriage which to her idea was to arrange everything, appease the father and rehabilitate Renée, and the shamefulness and fatal consequences of which she was unwilling to see.

It was never known how Madame Sidonie had got wind of this magnificent piece of business. The honour of the Bérauds had been dragged about in her basket amongst the protested bills of every dollymop of Paris. When she learned the story, she almost forced them to accept her brother, whose wife lay at death's door. Aunt Élisabeth ended by thinking that she was under an obligation to this lady, so gentle and humble, and who was so devoted to poor Renée, that she even found her a husband in her own family. The first interview between Saccard and the aunt took place in the little apartment on the upper floor of the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière. The civil servant, who had gained admittance through the carriage entrance in the Rue Papillon, understood, on beholding Madame Aubertot arrive by way of the shop and little staircase, all the ingenious mechanism of the two entrances. He was full of tact and good manners. He treated the marriage as a matter of business, but like a man of the world about to settle his gambling debts. Aunt Élisabeth was by far the more trembling of the two; she stammered, not daring to mention the hundred thousand francs which she had promised. It was he who first brought forward the money question, in the manner of a solicitor discussing a client's case. According to him, a hundred thousand francs was a ridiculous fortune for Mademoiselle Renée's husband to start housekeeping upon. And he laid a gentle stress on the word "Mademoiselle." Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel would despise still more a poor son-in-law; he would accuse him of having seduced his daughter for the sake of her money; perhaps, it might even occur to him to make some secret inquiries. Madame Aubertot, greatly frightened, and scared by Saccard's calm and polite way of talking, lost her head and consented to double the sum when he declared that he would not dare to ask for Renée's hand for less than two hundred thousand francs, not wishing to be considered an infamous fortune-hunter. The worthy lady departed quite confused, scarcely knowing what to think of a fellow who could be so indignant and yet enter into such an arrangement.

This first interview was followed by an official visit which Aunt Élisabeth paid Saccard at his apartments in the Rue Payenne. This time, she came in the name of Monsieur Béraud. The retired judge had refused to see "that man," as he called his daughter's seducer, so long as he was not married to Renée, to whom he had also closed his door. Madame Aubertot had full powers to arrange everything. She appeared delighted with the civil servant's luxurious surroundings; she had feared that the brother of that Madame Sidonie, with the draggled skirts, might be a blackguard. He received her, arrayed in a delicious dressing-gown. It was at the time, when the adventurers of the 2nd of December, after having paid their debts, were pitching their worn-out boots and frayed coats into the sewers, having their dirty chins shaved, and becoming respectable members of society. Saccard was at length joining the band; he took to cleaning his nails and using at his toilet the most invaluable powder and perfume. He was quite gallant; he changed his tactics and showed himself most prodigiously disinterested. When the old lady broached the subject of the marriage contract, he made a gesture as though to say that it was a matter of indifference to him. For a week past he had been studying the Code, considering this grave question upon which his future liberty of action in his underhand dealings would depend.

"For goodness' sake," said he, "let's say no more about this disagreeable money question. My opinion is that Mademoiselle Renée should remain mistress of her fortune and I master of mine. The notary will settle all that."

Aunt Élisabeth approved this arrangement; she trembled for fear this fellow, whose iron grip she could vaguely feel, should wish to thrust his fingers into her niece's dowry. She next gave the particulars of this dowry.

"My brother," said she, "possesses a fortune consisting mainly of landed property and houses. He is not the man to punish his daughter by reducing the share he intended for her. He gives her an estate in Sologne, valued at three hundred thousand francs, as well as a house in Paris said to be worth about two hundred thousand francs."

Saccard was quite dazzled, he had not expected such an amount; he slightly turned away his head so as to hide the rush of blood which dyed his face.

"That makes five hundred thousand francs," continued the aunt; "but I must not hide from you that the Sologne property only yields two per cent."

He smiled and repeated his disinterested gesture, wishing to imply that that could not affect him as he declined to meddle with his wife's fortune. He was seated in his easy-chair in an attitude of adorable indifference, with an absent-minded air, his foot playing with his slipper, and he appeared to be listening purely out of politeness. Madame Aubertot, with the good nature of a worthy old soul, spoke with difficulty, choosing her words so as not to wound him.

"Besides that, however, I wish to make Renée a present," she resumed. "I have no child of my own, my fortune will one day devolve to my nieces, and it is not because one of them is in grief that I would now close my hand. The wedding presents for both of them have been long ready. Renée's consists in some vast plots of ground near Charonne, which I have reason to believe are worth two hundred thousand francs. Only—"

At the word ground, Saccard slightly started. In spite of his pretended indifference he was listening with profound attention. Aunt Élisabeth became confused, at a loss for words to express what she wished to say. Turning very red, she at length continued:

"Only I wish that the ownership of this ground should be settled on Renée's first child. You no doubt understand my reason: I do not desire that this child should one day be an expense to you. Should it die, the property will become solely Renée's."

He did not display the least sign of disappointment, but his knit brow showed how deeply he was thinking. The plots of ground at Charonne had awakened a host of ideas within him. Madame Aubertot feared she had offended him by speaking of Renée's child, and she remained abashed and quite unable to continue the conversation.

"You have not told me in what street the house property valued at two hundred thousand francs is situated," said he, resuming his pleasant air.

"In the Rue de la Pépinière," she replied, "almost at the corner of the Rue d'Astorg."

This simple answer produced a decisive effect upon him. He could no longer conceal his delight; he drew his easy-chair nearer the lady, and with his southern volubility, and in coaxing tones said:

"Dear madame, have we not said enough, must we still continue to discuss this horrid money question? Listen, I wish to speak to you with all frankness, for I should be in despair did I not merit your esteem. I lost my wife lately, I have two children to look after, I am practical and sensible. By marrying your niece I shall be doing every one a good turn. If you have still any prejudice against me you will lose it later on, when I shall have dried all your tears and made the fortunes of all my descendants. Success is a golden flame which purifies everything. I will force Monsieur Béraud himself to hold out his hand to me and thank me."

He went rattling on, speaking for a long while in the same strain with mocking impudence which showed at times beneath his pleasant air. He talked of his brother the deputy, and of his father the receiver of taxes at Plassans. He ended by completely ingratiating himself with Aunt Élisabeth, who beheld with involuntary joy the drama through which she had been suffering for a month past terminate almost in a merry comedy in the hands of this clever man. It was settled that they should see the notary on the morrow.

As soon as Madame Aubertot took her departure he went to the Hôtel de Ville, and spent the day there examining certain documents with which he was acquainted. At the meeting at the notary's he raised a difficulty, he said that as Renée's dowry consisted solely in landed property he feared it would give her no end of trouble, and he thought it would be wise to sell at least the house in the Rue de la Pépinière and to invest the money for her in the funds. Madame Aubertot wished to refer the matter to Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel, who continued to shut himself up in his room. Saccard went out again until the evening. He visited the Rue de la Pépinière, he hurried about Paris with the thoughtful air of a general on the eve of a decisive battle. The next morning Madame Aubertot stated that Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel left everything to her. The marriage contract was drawn up on the basis already discussed. Saccard brought two hundred thousand francs, Renée's dowry consisted of the Sologne property and the house in the Rue de la Pépinière, which latter she undertook to sell; besides this, she would, in the event of her first child dying, be sole owner of the plots of ground at Charonne given by her aunt. The contract was in accordance with the system of separate estates which preserves to the husband and wife the entire administration of their respective fortunes. Aunt Élisabeth, who was listening attentively to the notary, appeared to be satisfied with this arrangement which seemed to insure her niece's independence by placing her fortune beyond the reach of any attempts that might be made upon it. A vague smile played upon Saccard's countenance as he saw the worthy lady approve each clause with a nod. The marriage was fixed to take place at the shortest possible date.

When everything was settled, Saccard went and paid a ceremonious visit to his brother Eugène to announce to him his union with Mademoiselle Renée Béraud Du Châtel. This master stroke astonished the deputy. As he did not attempt to conceal his surprise, the civil servant said:

"You told me to look about; I did so and I have found what I wanted."

Eugène, quite at sea at first, then began to see the truth. And in a charming tone of voice he observed:

"Come now, you're a clever fellow. You've called to ask me to be your best man, have you not? You may count upon me. If necessary I will bring all the members of the right of the Corps Législatif to your wedding; that would be a famous thing for you."

Then as he had opened the door, he lowered his voice to add:

"But tell me? I must not compromise myself too much just now, for we have a very difficult law to pass—The lady's condition is not too apparent, is it?"

Saccard gave him such a bitter look, that Eugène said to himself as he closed the door:

"That is a joke that would cost me dear, were I not a Rougon."

The marriage was performed at the church of Saint-Louis-en-l'Île. Saccard and Renée did not see each other until the eve of the great day. The interview took place in the evening, just at nightfall, in a low room of the Béraud mansion. They examined each other with curiosity. Since arrangements had been entered into for her marriage, Renée had regained her giddy ways, her light-heartedness. She was a tall girl of an exquisite though turbulent beauty, who had grown up at random amidst her school-girl caprices. She found Saccard little and ugly, but of a restless and intelligent ugliness which did not displease her; he was, moreover, perfect both in manners and conversation. He made a slight grimace on first seeing her; she no doubt appeared to him too tall, taller than he was himself. They exchanged a few words without embarrassment. Had the father been present, he might indeed have thought that they had known each other a long while, that they had committed some grievous fault together. Aunt Élisabeth assisted at the interview and blushed for them.

On the day after the wedding, which was quite an event in the Île Saint-Louis thanks to the presence of Eugène Rougon, whom a recent speech had brought to the fore, the newly married couple were at length admitted to the presence of Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel. Renée wept on finding her father looking older, graver and more mournful. Saccard, whom nothing had put out of countenance till then, was frozen by the chilliness and the dim light of the apartment, by the sad austerity of the tall old man, whose piercing eye seemed to him to search into the very depths of his conscience. The retired judge slowly kissed his daughter on the forehead, as though to tell her that he forgave her, and then turning to his son-in-law:

"Sir," said he simply, "we have suffered much. I count upon you to make us forget the wrong you have done us."

He held out his hand to him. But Saccard stood shivering. He was thinking that if Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel had not been bent low by the tragic grief of Renée's shame, he would at a glance, and without an effort, have seen through Madame Sidonie's machinations. The latter, after having brought her brother and Aunt Élisabeth together, had prudently made herself scarce. She had not even gone to the wedding. He made a point of being very frank with the old man, having read in his look his surprise at finding his daughter's seducer to be a little ugly fellow forty years old. The newly married couple were obliged to pass the first nights at the Béraud mansion. A month before, Christine had been sent away, so that the child of fourteen should have no suspicion of the drama that was being enacted in that house as serene and undisturbed as a cloister. When she returned home, she gazed with astonishment at her sister's husband, whom she also thought old and ugly. Renée was the only one who did not seem to notice either her husband's age or his sorry appearance. She treated him without contempt as without affection, with an absolute tranquillity through which occasionally gleamed a touch of ironical disdain. Saccard strutted about and made himself at home, and really, thanks to his frankness and good spirits, he little by little won the friendship of one and all. When they took their departure to occupy a superb suite of apartments in a new house in the Rue de Rivoli, Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel's look no longer displayed any astonishment, and little Christine romped with her brother-in-law as with an old friend. Renée was at that time four months gone in the family way; her husband was on the point of sending her into the country, when, in accordance with Madame Sidonie's prophecy, she had a miscarriage. She had laced herself up so tightly to hide her condition, which, moreover, disappeared beneath the fulness of her skirts, that she was obliged to keep her bed for several weeks. He was delighted with the adventure; fortune was at length smiling upon him; he had made a golden bargain, a magnificent dowry, a wife lovely enough to have him decorated in six months, and not the least encumbrance. He had been paid two hundred thousand francs to give his name to a fœtus which the mother would not even look at. From that moment his thoughts lovingly lingered on the plots of ground at Charonne. But for the time being he was giving all his attention to a speculation which was to form the basis of his fortune.

Notwithstanding the high position of his wife's family, he did not at once resign his post at the Hôtel de Ville. He talked of work on hand to be finished, and of some other occupation to be sought for. The truth was he wished to remain till the end on the battle-field where he was playing his first cards. He was so to say at home, and could cheat more at his ease.

His plan for making his fortune was simple and practical. Now that he possessed more money than he had ever hoped for to commence his operations, he intended to put his designs into execution on a grand scale. He knew Paris by heart; he knew that the shower of gold which was already beating against the walls would fall heavier every day. Clever people had only to open their pockets. He had placed himself among the clever ones by reading the future in the offices of the Hôtel de Ville. His duties had taught him what can be stolen in the buying and selling of houses and ground. He was fully acquainted with all the classic swindles: he knew how to sell for a million that which only cost five hundred thousand francs; how to pay the right to ransack the cash boxes of the State, which smiles and shuts its eyes; how, by making a Boulevard pass over the entrails of some old neighbourhood, to juggle with six storeyed houses, amidst the applause of all the dupes. And that which in those still clouded days, when the chancre of speculation was not beyond the period of incubation, made him a terrible gambler was that he foresaw more than his chiefs themselves respecting the future of stone and plaster reserved to Paris. He had ferreted about so much, collected together so many clues, that he might have prophesied the spectacle the new districts would offer in 1870. At times, as he walked along the streets, he would look at certain houses in a singular manner, as though they were old friends whose destiny, known to him alone, affected him deeply.

Two months previous to Angèle's death, he had taken her one Sunday to the Buttes Montmartre. The poor woman delighted in eating at restaurants; she was never more pleased than when, after a long walk, he would take her to dine at some suburban eating-house. That day they had their dinner right at the top of the hill, in a restaurant, with windows overlooking Paris, that ocean of houses with bluey roofs, looking like surging billows filling the immense horizon. Their table was placed before one of the windows. The sight of the Paris roofs enlivened Saccard. At dessert he called for a bottle of Burgundy. He smiled at space, he was most unusually gallant. And his look kept lovingly returning to that living, swarming sea, from which issued the deep voice of the crowd. It was autumn; beneath the vast pale sky the city lay languishing, a soft and tender grey in hue, studded here and there with dark green foliage, which resembled great leaves of nenuphars floating on a lake; the sun was setting behind a red cloud, and, whilst the background was filled with a slight haze, a golden dust, an auriferous dew was falling upon the city on the right bank of the river, in the neighbourhood of the Madeleine and the Tuileries. It was like the enchanted corner of some city of the "Arabian Nights," with trees formed of emeralds, roofs of sapphires, and weather-cocks of rubies. There came a moment when a ray of sunshine, gliding between two clouds, was so resplendent that the houses seemed to flare up and melt away like an ingot of gold in a crucible.

"Oh! look," said Saccard, with a childish laugh, "a shower of twenty-franc pieces has burst over Paris!"

Angèle began to laugh too, accusing these pieces of not being easy to gather up. But her husband had risen from his seat, and leaning against the handrail of the window, he continued:

"That's the Vendôme column shining over there, isn't it? There, more to the right, is the Madeleine—a fine neighbourhood, where there's plenty to be done. Ah! this time, it'll all be ablaze! Do you see? One could almost fancy that the whole neighbourhood was boiling in some chemist's still."

His voice was becoming grave and agitated. The comparison he had drawn seemed to strike him immensely, he had drank a few glasses of Burgundy and was musing; and he went on, stretching out his arm to show the different sights of Paris to Angèle, who was also leaning over the handrail on her side of the window.

"Yes, yes, what I said was right enough, more than one district will be melted down, and gold will stick to the fingers of those who heat and stir the copper. That great noodle Paris! see how immense he is and how innocently he slumbers! Such great towns are always fools! He has no idea of the army of picks that will attack him one of these fine mornings, and some of the mansions in the Rue d'Anjou would not shine so brightly beneath the setting sun if they knew they had no more than three or four years to live."

Angèle fancied her husband was joking. He had at times a taste for immense and disquieting jokes. She laughed, but with a vague fear, at seeing the little man tower above the giant crouched at his feet, and shake his fist at him while ironically pursing his lips.

"It's already begun," continued he; "but nothing to speak of as yet. Look over there, beside the Halles, Paris has been cut into four."

And with his extended hand, open and sharp edged like a cutlass, he made a motion as though separating the city into four portions.

"You're alluding to the Rue de Rivoli and the new Boulevard they are making aren't you?" asked his wife.

"Yes, the great window of Paris as it's called. They're clearing away the buildings that hide the Louvre and the Hôtel de Ville. But that's mere child's play! It's only good to rouse the public's appetite. When the first improvements are completed the grand work will begin. The city will be pierced in every direction to unite the suburbs to the main artery. The houses will fall amidst clouds of plaster. Look, follow the direction of my hand a minute. From the Boulevard du Temple to the Barrière du Trône will be one gap; then, more this way, from the Madeleine to the Plaine Monceaux will be another; and a third in this direction, another along here, another over there, and still another farther away, in fact gaps everywhere, Paris hacked about as with a sabre, its veins opened, feeding a hundred thousand navvies and masons, traversed right and left by splendid strategical ways which will bring the very forts right into the heart of the old quarters of the city."

Night was coming on. His dry and nervous hand kept hacking about in space. Angèle slightly shuddered before this living knife, these iron fingers mercilessly chopping up the boundless mass of dusky roofs. For some little while past the haze of the horizon had been slowly descending from the heights, and she fancied she could hear, beneath the gloom that was gathering in the hollows, a distant and prolonged sound of cracking, as though her husband's hand had really made the openings he had been speaking of, opening up Paris from one end to the other, severing beams, crushing masonry, leaving in its wake long and frightful wounds of demolished walls. The diminutiveness of this hand, implacably hovering over a giant prey, ended by becoming alarming, and whilst it tore open the entrails of the enormous city without an effort, it seemed to assume a strange shimmer of steel in the bluey twilight.

"There will be a third artery," continued Saccard, at the end of a pause, as though speaking to himself; "but that one is too distant, I see it less plainly. I have come across only a few signs of it. But it will be pure madness, the infernal gallop of millions, Paris intoxicated and overwhelmed!"

He again relapsed into silence, his eyes ardently fixed on the city, where the shadows were gathering deeper and deeper. He was probably interrogating that too distant future which escaped him. Then night enveloped all, the city became lost in a confused mass, one could hear it breathing plentifully, like some sea, the crest of the pale waves of which is all the eye can distinguish. Here and there, a few walls still preserved a whitish hue; and the yellow flames of the gas-jets pierced the gloom one by one, similar to stars shining amidst the darkness of a stormy sky.

Angèle shook off her feeling of uneasiness and continued the jest her husband had commenced at dessert.

"Ah! well," said she with a smile, "there's been a good shower of those twenty-franc pieces! The Parisians are counting them now. Look at the fine piles they're making at our feet!"

She pointed to the streets which descend from the Buttes Montmartre, with their double rows of lighted gas-lamps looking like piles of gold.

"And over there," cried she, indicating a galaxy of lights, "that is surely the treasury!"

The remark made Saccard laugh. They remained a few minutes longer at the window, delighted with this flood of "twenty-franc pieces," which was ending by covering the whole of Paris. On returning from Montmartre, the civil servant no doubt regretted having gossiped so much. He put it down to the Burgundy, and requested his wife not to repeat the "nonsense" he had been saying; he wished, said he, to be considered a serious person.

For a long time past, Saccard had been studying these three lines of streets and Boulevards, the pretty correct plan of which he had so far forgotten himself as to place before Angèle. When the latter died, he in nowise regretted that she carried with her into the tomb the recollection of all he had said up on the Buttes Montmartre. It was there that his fortune lay, in those famous gaps which his hand had, so to say, opened in the very heart of Paris, and he had made up his mind to share his idea with no one, knowing well enough that on the day of the sharing of the spoil there would be plenty of crows hovering over the gutted city.

His original plan had been to purchase, on low terms, some building or other which he knew beforehand was condemned to shortly come down, and to realize an immense profit by obtaining a substantial indemnity. He would, perhaps, have decided to make the attempt without a sou, to buy the building on credit and merely to pocket the difference afterwards, like people do on the Bourse, when his second marriage, bringing him in a premium of two hundred thousand francs, fixed and developed his plan. He had now made his calculations: under the name of an intermediary, and without appearing personally in the matter, he would purchase the house in the Rue de la Pépinière from his wife, and treble his outlay, thanks to the knowledge he had acquired in his perambulations through the Hôtel de Ville, and to his friendly relations with certain influential personages.

The reason he started when Aunt Élisabeth told him where the house was situated, was because it happened to be in the line of a contemplated thoroughfare, the piercing of which was at that time kept secret outside the sanctum of the prefect of the Seine. This thoroughfare, the Boulevard Malesherbes, would necessitate the clearance of the entire house. It was one of the first Napoleon's old projects which it was proposed to put into execution, "to give a normal outlet," so said serious people, "to districts lost behind a labyrinth of narrow streets, on the slopes of the hills which hem in Paris." This official phrase did not, of course, admit the interest the Empire had in the turning over of money, in those vast alterations about the city which left the working classes no time to think. One day at the prefect's, Saccard had ventured to consult that famous plan of Paris on which "an august hand" had marked, in red ink, the principal thoroughfares of the second network of streets. These gory-looking strokes from a pen cut deeper into Paris even than did the civil servant's hand.

The Boulevard Malesherbes, which razed to the ground some superb mansions in the Rue d'Anjou and the Rue de la Ville-l'Évêque, and which necessitated some very considerable levelling works, was to be laid out one of the first. When Saccard went to inspect the building in the Rue de la Pépinière, his thoughts reverted to that autumn evening, to that dinner he had eaten with Angèle up on the Buttes Montmartre, and during which, while the sun was setting, so thick a shower of gold had seemed to fall about the neighbourhood of the Madeleine. He smiled; he fancied that the dazzling cloud had burst right over his own courtyard, and that all he had to do was to go and gather up the twenty-franc pieces.

Whilst Renée, luxuriously installed in the apartments in the Rue de Rivoli, in the very midst of that new Paris of which she was about to become one of the queens, was meditating on her future toilettes, and trying her hand at leading the life of a great lady of fashion, her husband was devoutly nursing his first great scheme. He first of all purchased of his wife the house in the Rue de la Pépinière, thanks to the intermediary of a certain Larsonneau, whom he had come across prying like himself into the secrets of the Hôtel de Ville, but who had been foolish enough to get caught one day that he was examining the contents of the prefect's drawers. Larsonneau had set up in business as an agent at the end of a dark and dank courtyard, at the foot of the Rue Saint-Jacques. His pride and his covetousness suffered cruelly there. He found himself in the same position as Saccard before his marriage; he had, he would say, also invented "a machine for coining five franc pieces;" only he was minus the funds necessary to take advantage of his invention. It needed only a few words for him to come to an understanding with his former colleague, and he set to work with so good a will that he obtained the house for a hundred and fifty thousand francs. Renée was already, at the end of a few months, in need of considerable sums of money. The husband did not appear in the matter except to authorise his wife to sell. When everything was settled she asked him to invest a hundred thousand francs for her in the funds, and confidently handed him the money, no doubt as an appeal to his feelings and to shut his eyes regarding the fifty thousand francs she retained. He smiled in a knowing manner; it formed part of his calculations that she should squander her money; these fifty thousand francs which were about to disappear in jewellery and lace were to bring him in cent per cent. He carried his honesty so far, for he was so well satisfied with his first affair, as to really invest Renée's hundred thousand francs and to hand her the certificates. His wife could not realize upon them; he was certain of finding them in the nest if ever he happened to want them.

"My dear, this will do for your dress," said he gallantly.

When he was in possession of the house, he was skilful enough to sell it twice in a month to fictitious persons, increasing each time the amount paid. The last purchaser gave no less than three hundred thousand francs. Meanwhile, Larsonneau, who alone appeared as representative of the successive landlords, worked upon the tenants. He pitilessly declined to renew the leases, unless they consented to a formidable increase of rent. The tenants, who had an inkling of the approaching dispossession, were in despair; they ended by agreeing to the increase, especially when Larsonneau added in a conciliatory manner that this increase should remain a fictitious one during the first five years. As for the tenants who continued nasty, they were replaced by persons to whom the apartments were let for nothing and who signed everything they were asked to; there was thus a double profit: the rent was raised, and the indemnity reserved to the tenant for his lease was to go to Saccard. Madame Sidonie was willing to assist her brother by starting a piano-dealer's in one of the shops. It was then that Saccard and Larsonneau were carried away by their greed for gain and rather overreached themselves: they concocted the books of a regular business, they falsified accounts, so as to establish a sale of pianos on an enormous footing. During several nights they sat scribbling away together. Worked in this skilful manner the house increased in value threefold. Thanks to the last sale, to the raising of the rent, to the false tenants, and to Madame Sidonie's piano business, it might be considered worth five hundred thousand francs when the indemnity commission came to inquire into the matter.

The mechanism of the instrument of dispossession, of that powerful machine which during fifteen years turned Paris topsy-turvy, breathing fortune and ruin the while, is of the simplest. Directly a new thoroughfare is decided upon, the road inspectors draw up the plan in separate portions and appraise the various buildings to be removed. They generally, after making inquiries, arrive at the total amount of the rents and can thus fix upon the approximate value. The indemnity commission, consisting of members of the municipal council, always offers something beneath this sum, knowing that the interested parties will be sure to demand more, and that there will be a mutual concession. When they are unable to come to terms, the matter is brought before a jury which decides without appeal between the offer of the municipality and the claims of the dispossessed landlord or tenant.

Saccard, who had remained at the Hôtel de Ville for the decisive moment, had at one time the impudence to wish to be appointed to appraise his own house when the Boulevard Malesherbes was commenced. But he feared by so doing to paralyse his influence with the members of the indemnity commission. He caused one of his colleagues to be chosen, a gentle and smiling young man named Michelin, whose wife, an adorably beautiful creature, came at times to offer her husband's excuses to his chiefs when he absented himself through indisposition. Saccard had noticed that pretty Madame Michelin, who glided so humbly through the half closed doorways, was all-powerful; Michelin gained some advancement at each illness, he made his way by taking to his bed. During one of his absences, when his wife was calling nearly every morning at the office to say how he was getting on, Saccard came across him twice on the outer Boulevards, smoking his cigar with the tender and delighted air which never left him. This filled Saccard with sympathy for the good young man, for the happy couple so ingenious and so practical. He had a great admiration for all money-making machines cleverly worked. When he had got Michelin appointed he called on his charming wife, insisted on introducing her to Renée, and talked before her of his brother the deputy, the illustrious orator. Madame Michelin understood. From that day her husband kept his most select smiles for his colleague. The latter, who had no intention of taking the worthy fellow into his confidence, contented himself by being present as if by chance on the day when the other proceeded to appraise the house in the Rue de la Pépinière. He assisted him. Michelin, who had the stupidest and emptiest head it is possible to imagine, followed his wife's instructions, which were to satisfy Monsieur Saccard in all things. Moreover, he had not the slightest suspicion of anything; he imagined that his friend was in a hurry to see him finish his work so as to take him off to a café. The leases, the receipts for rent, Madame Sidonie's famous books passed through his colleague's hands beneath his eyes, without his even having time to check the figures which the other read out. Larsonneau was there also, treating his accomplice as a perfect stranger.

"Come, put down five hundred thousand francs," Saccard ended by saying. "The house is worth more. Hurry up, I think there is going to be a change in the staff of the Hôtel de Ville, and I want to talk to you about it so that you may let your wife know."

The business was thus carried through. But he still had other fears. He was afraid that the sum of five hundred thousand francs would appear rather excessive to the indemnity commission, for a house which was notoriously only worth two hundred thousand. The formidable rise in the value of buildings had not then taken place. An inquiry would have caused him to run the risk of serious unpleasantness. He recalled his brother's words: "No noisy scandal or I shall suppress you;" and he knew that Eugène was the man to put his threat into execution. It was necessary to blindfold the gentlemen forming the commission and to ensure their good will. He cast his eyes on two influential men whom he had made his friends by the way in which he saluted them in the passages whenever he met them. The thirty-six members of the municipal council were carefully selected by the Emperor himself from a list drawn up by the prefect comprising the senators, deputies, lawyers, doctors, and great manufacturers who prostrated themselves the most devotedly before the power that was; but amongst them all Baron Gouraud and Monsieur Toutin-Laroche especially deserved the good will of the Tuileries by their fervour.

All Baron Gouraud's history is contained in this short biography: made a baron by Napoleon I. for supplying bad biscuits to the grand army, he had successively been a peer under Louis XVIII., Charles X., and Louis-Philippe, and he was now a senator under Napoleon III. He was a worshipper of the throne, of the four gilded boards covered with velvet; it mattered little to him who the man was that sat upon it. With his enormous stomach, his ox-like countenance, his elephantine manner, he boasted a delightful rascality; he would sell himself majestically and commit the greatest infamies in the name of duty and conscience. But this man surprised one still more by his vices. Stories were told of him which could only be whispered from ear to ear. His seventy-eight years flourished amidst the most monstrous debauchery. On two occasions it had been necessary to hush up some filthy adventures so that his embroidered senator's coat should not be dragged through the dock of the assize court.

Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, who was tall and thin, and the inventor of a mixture of suet and stearin for the manufacture of candles, had a hankering to enter the senate. He stuck to Baron Gouraud like a leech; he rubbed up against him with the vague idea that his doing so would bring him luck. In reality he was thoroughly practical, and had he come across a senator's chair to be sold he would have fiercely higgled over the price. The Empire was about to bring out this greedy nonentity, this narrow mind which had a genius for dabbling in industrial affairs. He was the first to sell his name to a bogus company, one of those associations which sprouted up like poisonous toadstools on the dunghill of imperial speculations. At that time one could have seen on all the walls a poster bearing the following words in bold black letters:—"Société générale of the ports of Morocco," and beneath which the name of Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, with his title of municipal councillor, appeared at the head of the list of directors, all more or less unknown personages. This proceeding, which has become far more popular since, succeeded wonderfully; the shares were snapped up, though the question of the ports of Morocco was not very clear, and the worthy people who brought their money were themselves unable to explain to what purpose it was to be put. The poster announced in a superb manner the project of establishing commercial stations along the Mediterranean coast. For two years past certain newspapers had been celebrating this magnificent undertaking, which they declared to be more and more prosperous every three months. Amongst the municipal council Monsieur Toutin-Laroche had the reputation of being a first-class administrator; he was one of the strong minds of the neighbourhood, and his acrimonious tyranny over his colleagues was only equalled by his devout platitude in the presence of the prefect. He was already engaged in founding a great financial company, the Crédit Viticole, a sort of loan office for vine growers, and to which he would allude in a grave and reticent manner which aroused the covetousness of the fools around him.

Saccard secured the protection of these two personages by rendering them certain services, of the importance of which he cleverly pretended to be ignorant. He brought his sister and the baron together, the latter being then compromised in a very objectionable affair. He took her to him, under the pretence of soliciting his support in the favour of the dear woman who had been petitioning for a long time to obtain an order for the supply of curtains to the Tuileries. But it so happened that, when the road inspector left them together, it was Madame Sidonie who promised the baron to enter into negotiations with certain people who were stupid enough not to have felt honoured by the attention that a senator had deigned to bestow on their daughter, a little girl ten years old. Saccard took Monsieur Toutin-Laroche in hand himself; he manœuvred so as to obtain an interview with him in a corridor, and then brought the conversation round to the famous Crédit Viticole. At the end of five minutes, the great administrator, dazed and astounded by the amazing things told him, took the civil service clerk familiarly by the arm and detained him a full hour in the passage. Saccard whispered in his ear some financial deals which were prodigiously ingenious. When Monsieur Toutin-Laroche took his departure, he shook his hand in an expressive manner, and gave him the glance of a freemason.

"You shall belong to it," murmured he, "you must really belong to it."

Saccard surpassed himself throughout this affair. He carried his prudence so far as not to make Baron Gouraud and Monsieur Toutin-Laroche accomplices. He visited them separately, letting drop a word or two in their ear in favour of one of his friends who was about to be dispossessed of his house in the Rue de la Pépinière; he was careful to tell each of his confederates that he would mention the matter to no other member of the commission, that it was all very uncertain, but that he counted on his friendliness.

The road inspector had done right to fear and to take his precautions. When the documents relating to his house came before the indemnity commission, it so happened that one of the members lived in the Rue d'Astorg, and knew the house. This member protested against the sum of five hundred thousand francs, which, according to him, should have been reduced to less than half. Aristide had had the impudence to have a claim sent in for seven hundred thousand francs. On that day Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, who was usually very disagreeable towards his colleagues, was even of a more detestable temper still. He became quite angry, and took the part of the landlords.

"We're all of us landlords, gentlemen," cried he. "The Emperor wishes to do grand things, don't let us stick at trifles. This house is no doubt worth the five hundred thousand francs; it's one of our own people, a city inspector, who fixed this price. Really, one would almost fancy we were living amongst thieves; you'll see, we shall end by suspecting one another."

Baron Gouraud, sitting heavily on his chair, watched in a surprised manner, from out of the corner of his eye, Monsieur Toutin-Laroche storming away in favour of the owner of the house in the Rue de la Pépinière. He had a suspicion. But, after all, as this violent outburst saved him the trouble of speaking, he set to slowly nodding his head as a sign of his complete approval. The member hailing from the Rue d'Astorg indignantly resisted, determined not to yield to the two tyrants of the commission in a matter in which he felt himself to be more competent than they. It was then that Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, noticing the baron's marks of approval, hastily pounced upon the documents relating to the case, and said curtly:

"Very well. We'll dispel your doubts. If you will allow it, I'll take the matter in hand, and Baron Gouraud shall join me in the inquiry."

"Yes, yes," said the baron gravely, "there must be no underhand dealings to sully our decisions."

The documents had already disappeared inside Monsieur Toutin-Laroche's capacious pockets. The commission had no choice but to accept the arrangement. As they stood outside upon the quay on leaving the meeting, the two cronies looked at each other without smiling. They felt themselves to be confederates, and this added to their assurance. Two vulgar minds would have sought an explanation; they continued to plead the case of the landlords, as though they could still be overheard, and to deplore the spirit of mistrust which was insinuating itself everywhere. Just as they were about to separate, the baron observed, with a smile:

"Ah! I was forgetting, my dear colleague, I am just about to leave for the country. You would be very kind to make this little inquiry without me. And, above all, don't peach; our colleagues are already complaining that I take too many holidays."

"Be easy," replied Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, "I will go at once to the Rue de la Pépinière."

He went quietly home, with a certain feeling of admiration for the baron, who so cleverly got out of the most ticklish positions. He kept the documents in his pocket, and at the next sitting of the commission he declared, in a peremptory tone of voice, both in his own name and in the baron's, that between the offer of five hundred thousand francs and the claim of seven hundred thousand, they should take a medium course, and award six hundred thousand francs. There was not the slightest opposition. The member hailing from the Rue d'Astorg, having no doubt reflected, said, with great simplicity, that he had been mistaken: he had thought it was the next house.

It was thus that Aristide Saccard won his first victory. He quadrupled his outlay, and secured two accomplices. One thing alone made him uneasy; when he wished to destroy Madame Sidonie's famous books, he was unable to find them. He hastened to Larsonneau, who boldly avowed that he had them, and that he meant to stick to them. The other did not lose his temper; he inferred that he had only been anxious on his dear friend's account, who was far more compromised than he by these entries, which were almost entirely in his handwriting, but that he was quite easy now that he knew they were safe. In reality, he would willingly have strangled "his dear friend;" he remembered a very compromising document, a bogus inventory, which he had been foolish enough to draw up, and which must have been left in one of the ledgers. Handsomely remunerated, Larsonneau started a business agency in the Rue de Rivoli, where he had offices furnished as luxuriously as any courtesan's apartments. On leaving the Hôtel de Ville, Saccard, having a considerable amount of funds at his disposal, launched madly into speculation, whilst Renée, carried away by her intoxication, filled Paris with the clatter of her equipages, the sparkle of her diamonds, and the whirl of her noisy and adorable existence.

Now and again, the husband and wife, those two enthusiasts of money and pleasure, penetrated into the chilly mists of the Île Saint-Louis. They felt as though they were entering a dead city.

The Béraud mansion, built in the early part of the seventeenth century, was one of those square buildings, gloomy and severe-looking, with tall narrow windows, so numerous in the Marais district, and which are let to schoolmasters, manufacturers of seltzer water, and bonders of wines and spirits. The building, however, was in an admirable state of preservation. On the Rue Saint-Louis-en-l'Île side it consisted of only three storeys, storeys fifteen and twenty feet high. The ground floor, not near so lofty, had its windows protected by enormous iron bars, windows which sunk dismally into the dreary thickness of the walls, whilst the arched door, almost as broad as high, and bearing a cast-iron knocker, was painted a deep green and strengthened with enormous nails, forming stars and lozenges on either panel. This door was typical, with blocks of granite on each flank, half buried in the soil and protected by broad bands of iron. One could see that formerly a gutter had run under the centre of this door, the pavement of the porch sloping gently down on either side: but Monsieur Béraud had decided to close up this gutter by having the entrance laid with bitumen; this was, moreover, the only sacrifice he was ever willing to make to modern architecture. The windows of the upper floors were ornamented with slender handrails of wrought iron, which allowed a full view of the colossal sashes of substantial brown wood frames and little greenish panes of glass. Right at the top, opposite the attics, the roof came to an end, and the gutter alone continued on its way to discharge the rain water into the pipes placed for the purpose. And what tended to increase still further the austere bareness of the frontage was the total absence of any blind or shutter, for at no season of the year did the sun ever shine on these pale and melancholy stones. This frontage, with its venerable air, its middle-class severity, slumbered solemnly amid the peacefulness of the neighbourhood, the silence of the street, seldom disturbed by the passage of vehicles.

In the interior of the mansion was a square courtyard surrounded by arcades, a kind of Place Royale on a reduced scale, paved with enormous flags, which finished giving to this lifeless abode the appearance of a cloister. Facing the porch a fountain, a lion's head half worn away, the gaping jaws of which were alone distinguishable, discharged from an iron tube a thick and monotonous water into a trough all green with moss, its edges polished by wear. This water was icy cold. Tufts of grass sprouted up between the flagstones. In summer-time a narrow ray of sunshine entered the courtyard, and this occasional visit had whitened a corner of the frontage on the south side, whilst the three other walls, morose and blackish, were streaked with mildew. There, in the depths of this courtyard as chilly and silent as a well, lighted with the white glimmer of a wintry day, one could have thought oneself a thousand leagues away from that new Paris wherein was flaring every passionate enjoyment, amidst the hubbub of the millions. The apartments of the mansion possessed the sad calm, the cold solemnity of the courtyard. Reached by a broad staircase with an iron handrail, where the footsteps and the coughing of visitors resounded as in the aisle of a church, they extended in long suites of vast and lofty rooms, in which the ancient furniture of dark woodwork and squat design seemed lost; and the pale light was only peopled by the figures on the tapestries, whose great colourless bodies were just vaguely distinguishable. All the luxury pertaining to the old Parisian middle classes was there, a stiff and wear-resisting luxury, chairs the oak seats of which are scarcely covered with a handful of tow, beds of inflexible material, linen chests in which the roughness of the boards would peculiarly compromise the slender existence of modern dresses. Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel had selected his apartments in the darkest portion of the mansion, on the first floor, between the street and the courtyard. He was there in a marvellous surrounding of peacefulness, silence and shade. When he pushed open the doors, traversing the solemnity of the rooms with his slow and serious step, one could have fancied him one of those members of the old parliaments, whose portraits adorned the walls, returning home wrapt in reverie after discussing and refusing to sign an edict of the king's.

But in this still house, in this cloister, there existed a warm nest full of life, a corner of sunshine and gaiety, an abode of adorable childhood, fresh air, and bright light. One had to ascend a host of little staircases, pass along ten or twelve corridors, go down and come up again; in fact, make quite a journey, and then one at last reached a vast chamber, a kind of belvedere built up on the roof, at the back of the mansion, right above the Quai de Béthune. It was in a full southern aspect. The window opened so wide that the heavens, with all their rays, fresh air, and azure blue, seemed to enter there. Perched aloft like a pigeon-house, the apartment contained long boxes full of flowers, an immense aviary, but not a single article of furniture. There was simply some matting spread over the floor. It was the "children's room." Throughout the mansion it was known and called by this name. The house was so cold, the courtyard so damp, that aunt Élisabeth had dreaded some harm might come to Christine and Renée from this chill breath which hung about the walls; more than once had she scolded the children for running about the arcades, and taking a delight in dipping their little arms in the icy water of the fountain. Then she had the idea to turn this out-of-the-way garret to account for them, the only nook wherein the sunshine had been entering and rejoicing, all by itself, for two centuries past, in the midst of the cobwebs. She gave them some matting, some birds, and some flowers. The little girls were delighted. During the holidays Renée lived there, bathing in the yellow sunshine, which seemed pleased with the embellishments made to its retreat, and with the two fair heads sent to keep it company. The room became a paradise, ever resounding with the chirping of the birds and the chatter of the children. It had been given up to them entirely. They called it "our room;" it was their domain; they even went so far as to lock themselves in to prove to their satisfaction that they were the sole mistresses of it. What an abode of happiness! A massacre of playthings lay expiring on the matting in the midst of the bright sunshine.

And the great delight of the children's room was, after all, the vast horizon. From the other windows of the mansion there was nothing to gaze upon but black walls a few feet off. But from this one, one could see all that portion of the Seine, all that district of Paris which extends from the Cité to the Pont de Bercy, flat and immense, and which resembles some primitive city in Holland. Down below, on the Quai de Béthune, were some tumble-down wooden sheds, accumulations of beams and fallen roofs, amidst which the children often amused themselves by watching enormous rats scamper about, with a vague dread of seeing them crawl up the high walls. But it was beyond this that the real delight of the view began. The boom, with its tiers of timbers, its buttresses resembling those of some Gothic cathedral, and the slender Pont de Constantine swaying like a piece of lace beneath the footsteps of passengers, crossed each other at right angles, and seemed to dam up and keep in check the enormous mass of water. Right in front, the trees of the Halle aux Vins, and further away, the shrubberies of the Jardin des Plantes were a mass of green, and spread out as far as the horizon; whilst, on the other side of the river, the Quai Henri IV. and the Quai de la Rapée extended their low and irregular buildings, their row of houses which, looked at from above, resembled the tiny wood and cardboard houses the little girls kept in boxes. In the background, to the right, the slate roof of the Salpêtrière rose with a bluish tinge above the trees. Then, in the centre, descending right down to the Seine, the broad paved banks formed two long grey tracks, streaked here and there by a row of casks, a horse and cart, or an empty coal or wood barge lying stranded high and dry. But the soul of all this, the soul which filled the landscape, was the Seine, the living river; it came from afar, from the vague and trembling border of the horizon, it emerged from over there, as from a dream, to flow straight to the children, in the midst of its tranquil majesty, its mighty expansion which spread and became a flood of water at their feet, at the extremity of the island. The two bridges which crossed it, the Pont de Bercy and the Pont d'Austerlitz, seemed like necessary bonds placed there to keep it in check, and prevent it rising to the room. The little ones loved the giant, they filled their eyes with its colossal flow, with that ever murmuring flood which rolled towards them, as though to reach to where they were, and which they could feel rive and disappear to the right and left into the unknown, with the docility of a conquered Titan. On fine days, mornings with a blue sky overhead, they were charmed with the beautiful dresses the Seine assumed; varying dresses which changed from blue to green, with a thousand infinitely delicate tints; one could have fancied them of silk, spotted with white flames, and trimmed with frills of satin; whilst the boats drawn up at either bank formed an edging of black velvet ribbon. In the distance, especially, the material became quite admirable and precious, like some fairy's tunic of enchanted gauze; beyond the strip of dark green satin, with which the shadow of the bridges girdled the Seine, were plastrons of gold and skirts of some plaited material the colour of the sun. The immense sky formed a vaulted roof above this water, these low rows of houses, this foliage of the two parks.

Weary at times of this boundless horizon, Renée, already a big girl, and full of a carnal curiosity picked up at school, would take a peep at Petit's floating swimming-baths moored to the extremity of the island. She sought to catch a glimpse, between the waving linen clothes hung up on lines in place of a roof, of the men in their bathing drawers, and with their chests all bare.