That very day, as they were saying good-bye, Christine took Sandoz aside, and said, in an imploring voice: 

‘Do come again soon, won’t you?  He is bored.’

In fact, Claude had fits of profound melancholy.  He abandoned his work, went out alone, and prowled in spite of himself about Faucheur’s inn, at the spot where the ferry-boat landed its passengers, as if ever expecting to see all Paris come ashore there.  He had Paris on the brain; he went there every month and returned desolate, unable to work.  Autumn came, then winter, a very wet and muddy winter, and he spent it in a state of morose torpidity, bitter even against Sandoz, who, having married in October, could no longer come to Bennecourt so often.  Claude only seemed to wake up at each of the other’s visits; deriving a week’s excitement from them, and never ceasing to comment feverishly about the news brought from yonder.  He, who formerly had hidden his regret of Paris, nowadays bewildered Christine with the way in which he chatted to her from morn till night about things she was quite ignorant of, and people she had never seen.  When Jacques fell asleep, there were endless comments between the parents as they sat by the fireside.  Claude grew passionate, and Christine had to give her opinion and to pronounce judgment on all sorts of matters.

Was not Gagniere an idiot for stultifying his brain with music, he who might have developed so conscientious a talent as a landscape painter?  It was said that he was now taking lessons on the piano from a young lady—­the idea, at his age!  What did she, Christine, think of it?  And Jory had been trying to get into the good graces of Irma Becot again, ever since she had secured that little house in the Rue de Moscou!  Christine knew those two; two jades who well went together, weren’t they?  But the most cunning of the whole lot was Fagerolles, to whom he, Claude, would tell a few plain truths and no mistake, when he met him.  What! the turn-coat had competed for the Prix de Rome, which, of course, he had managed to miss.  To think of it.  That fellow did nothing but jeer at the School, and talked about knocking everything down, yet took part in official competitions!  Ah, there was no doubt but that the itching to succeed, the wish to pass over one’s comrades and be hailed by idiots, impelled some people to very dirty tricks.  Surely Christine did not mean to stick up for him, eh?  She was not sufficiently a philistine to defend him.  And when she had agreed with everything Claude said, he always came back with nervous laughter to the same story—­which he thought exceedingly comical—­the story of Mahoudeau and Chaine, who, between them, had killed little Jabouille, the husband of Mathilde, that dreadful herbalist woman.  Yes, killed the poor consumptive fellow with kindness one evening when he had had a fainting fit, and when, on being called in by the woman, they had taken to rubbing him with so much vigour that he had remained dead in their hands.