It was thirty-five minutes past eight by the big clock of the central building when Mathieu crossed the yard towards the office which he occupied as chief designer.  For eight years he had been employed at the works where, after a brilliant and special course of study, he had made his beginning as assistant draughtsman when but nineteen years old, receiving at that time a salary of one hundred francs a month.  His father, Pierre Froment,* had four sons by Marie his wife—­Jean the eldest, then Mathieu, Marc, and Luc—­and while leaving them free to choose a particular career he had striven to give each of them some manual calling.  Leon Beauchene, the founder of the works, had been dead a year, and his son Alexandre had succeeded him and married Constance Meunier, daughter of a very wealthy wall-paper manufacturer of the Marais, at the time when Mathieu entered the establishment, the master of which was scarcely five years older than himself.  It was there that Mathieu had become acquainted with a poor cousin of Alexandre’s, Marianne, then sixteen years old, whom he had married during the following year.

  * Of Lourdes, Rome, and Paris.

Marianne, when only twelve, had become dependent upon her uncle, Leon Beauchene.  After all sorts of mishaps a brother of the latter, one Felix Beauchene, a man of adventurous mind but a blunderhead, had gone to Algeria with his wife and daughter, there to woo fortune afresh; and the farm he had established was indeed prospering when, during a sudden revival of Arab brigandage, both he and his wife were murdered and their home was destroyed.  Thus the only place of refuge for the little girl, who had escaped miraculously, was the home of her uncle, who showed her great kindness during the two years of life that remained to him.  With her, however, were Alexandre, whose companionship was rather dull, and his younger sister, Seraphine, a big, vicious, and flighty girl of eighteen, who, as it happened, soon left the house amid a frightful scandal—­an elopement with a certain Baron Lowicz, a genuine baron, but a swindler and forger, to whom it became necessary to marry her.  She then received a dowry of 300,000 francs.  Alexandre, after his father’s death, made a money match with Constance, who brought him half a million francs, and Marianne then found herself still more a stranger, still more isolated beside her new cousin, a thin, dry, authoritative woman, who ruled the home with absolute sway.  Mathieu was there, however, and a few months sufficed:  fine, powerful, and healthy love sprang up between the young people; there was no lightning flash such as throws the passion-swayed into each other’s arms, but esteem, tenderness, faith, and that mutual conviction of happiness in reciprocal bestowal which tends to indissoluble marriage.  And they were delighted at marrying penniless, at bringing one another but their full hearts forever and forever.  The only change in Mathieu’s circumstances was an increase of salary to two hundred francs a month.  True, his new cousin by marriage just vaguely hinted at a possible partnership, but that would not be till some very much later date.