fauteuil that was awaiting her in the chimney nook opposite her old friend.  There, by the steady, tranquil lamplight, she applied herself industriously to knitting socks for the children of the poor, while he, his eyes fixed on the crumbling brands, with no occupation for body or mind, was as one already dead, in a state of constantly increasing stupor.  They certainly did not exchange twenty words in the course of a day; whenever she, who still continued to go about the house at intervals, involuntarily allowed some bit of news from the outer world to escape her lips, he silenced her with a gesture, so that no tidings of the siege of Paris, the disasters on the Loire and all the daily renewed horrors of the invasion had gained admission there.  But the colonel might stop his ears and shut out the light of day as he would in his self-appointed tomb; the air he breathed must have brought him through key-hole and crevices intelligence of the calamity that was everywhere throughout the land, for every new day beheld him sinking, slowly dying, despite his determination not to know the evil news.

While matters were in this condition at one end of the house Delaherche, who was never contented unless occupied, was bustling about and making attempts to start up his business once more, but what with the disordered condition of the labor market and the pecuniary embarrassment of many among his customers, he had so far only put a few looms in motion.  Then it occurred to him, as a means of killing the time that hung heavy on his hands, to make a complete inventory of his business and perfect certain changes and improvements that he had long had in mind.  To assist him in his labors he had just then at his disposal a young man, the son of an old business acquaintance, who had drifted in on him after the battle.  Edmond Lagarde, who, although he was twenty-three years old, would not have been taken for more than eighteen, had grown to man’s estate in his father’s little dry-goods shop at Passy; he was a sergeant in the 5th line regiment and had fought with great bravery throughout the campaign, so much so that he had been knocked over near the Minil gate about five o’clock, when the battle was virtually ended, his left arm shattered by one of the last shots fired that day, and Delaherche, when the other wounded were removed from the improvised ambulance in the drying room, had good-naturedly received him as an inmate of his house.  It was under these circumstances that Edmond was now one of the family, having an apartment in the house and taking his meals at the common table, and, now that his wound was healed, acting as a sort of secretary to the manufacturer while waiting for a chance to get back to Paris.  He had signed a parole binding himself not to attempt to leave the city, and owing to this and to his protector’s influence the Prussian authorities did not interfere with him.  He was fair, with blue eyes, and pretty as a woman; so timid withal that his face assumed a beautiful hue of rosy red whenever anyone spoke to him.  He had been his mother’s darling; she had impoverished herself, expending all the profits of their little business to send him to college.  And he adored Paris and bewailed his compulsory absence from it when talking to Gilberte, did this wounded cherub, whom the young woman had displayed great good-fellowship in nursing.