who was so persevering, and so highly recommended by his masters.  The medal aroused his enthusiasm; he at once gave the young fellow his daughter and took him as a partner, who would soon increase his millions now lying idle, since he knew all that was needful in order to build properly.  Besides, by this arrangement poor Regine, always low-spirited and ailing, would at least have a husband in perfect health.

’Well, a man must be fond of money to marry that wretched flayed kitten,’ repeated Claude.

And as Christine compassionately took the girl’s part, he added: 

’But I am not down upon her.  So much the better if the marriage does not finish her off.  She is certainly not to be blamed, if her father, the ex-stonemason, had the stupid ambition to marry a girl of the middle-classes.  Her father, you know, has the vitiated blood of generations of drunkards in his veins, and her mother comes of a stock in the last stages of degeneracy.  Ah! they may coin money, but that doesn’t prevent them from being excrescences on the face of the earth!’

He was growing ferocious, and Christine had to clasp him in her arms and kiss him, and laugh, to make him once more the good-natured fellow of earlier days.  Then, having calmed down, he professed to understand things, saying that he approved of the marriages of his old chums.  It was true enough, all three had taken wives unto themselves.  How funny life was!

Once more the summer drew to an end; it was the fourth spent at Bennecourt.  In reality they could never be happier than now; life was peaceful and cheap in the depths of that village.  Since they had been there they had never lacked money.  Claude’s thousand francs a year and the proceeds of the few pictures he had sold had sufficed for their wants; they had even put something by, and had bought some house linen.  On the other hand, little Jacques, by now two years and a half old, got on admirably in the country.  From morning till night he rolled about the garden, ragged and dirt-begrimed, but growing as he listed in robust ruddy health.  His mother often did not know where to take hold of him when she wished to wash him a bit.  However, when she saw him eat and sleep well she did not trouble much; she reserved her anxious affection for her big child of an artist, whose despondency filled her with anguish.  The situation grew worse each day, and although they lived on peacefully without any cause for grief, they, nevertheless, drifted to melancholy, to a discomfort that showed itself in constant irritation.

It was all over with their first delights of country life.  Their rotten boat, staved in, had gone to the bottom of the Seine.  Besides, they did not even think of availing themselves of the skiff that the Faucheurs had placed at their disposal.  The river bored them; they had grown too lazy to row.  They repeated their exclamations of former times respecting certain delightful nooks in the islets, but without