Five days later, after packing and sending their chattels to the railway, they started for Paris.

Claude was already on the road with little Jacques, when Christine fancied that she had forgotten something.  She returned alone to the house; and finding it quite bare and empty, she burst out crying.  It seemed as if something were being torn from her, as if she were leaving something of herself behind—­what, she could not say.  How willingly would she have remained! how ardent was her wish to live there always—­she who had just insisted on that departure, that return to the city of passion where she scented the presence of a rival.  However, she continued searching for what she lacked, and in front of the kitchen she ended by plucking a rose, a last rose, which the cold was turning brown.  And then she slowly closed the gate upon the deserted garden.

VII

WHEN Claude found himself once more on the pavement of Paris he was seized with a feverish longing for hubbub and motion, a desire to gad about, scour the whole city, and see his chums.  He was off the moment he awoke, leaving Christine to get things shipshape by herself in the studio which they had taken in the Rue de Douai, near the Boulevard de Clichy.  In this way, on the second day of his arrival, he dropped in at Mahoudeau’s at eight o’clock in the morning, in the chill, grey November dawn which had barely risen.

However, the shop in the Rue du Cherche-Midi, which the sculptor still occupied, was open, and Mahoudeau himself, half asleep, with a white face, was shivering as he took down the shutters.

Ah! it’s you.  The devil! you’ve got into early habits in the country.  So it’s settled—­you are back for good?’

‘Yes; since the day before yesterday.’

’That’s all right.  Then we shall see something of each other.  Come in; it’s sharp this morning.’

But Claude felt colder in the shop than outside.  He kept the collar of his coat turned up, and plunged his hands deep into his pockets; shivering before the dripping moisture of the bare walls, the muddy heaps of clay, and the pools of water soddening the floor.  A blast of poverty had swept into the place, emptying the shelves of the casts from the antique, and smashing stands and buckets, which were now held together with bits of rope.  It was an abode of dirt and disorder, a mason’s cellar going to rack and ruin.  On the window of the door, besmeared with whitewash, there appeared in mockery, as it were, a large beaming sun, roughly drawn with thumb-strokes, and ornamented in the centre with a face, the mouth of which, describing a semicircle, seemed likely to burst with laughter.

‘Just wait,’ said Mahoudeau, ’a fire’s being lighted.  These confounded workshops get chilly directly, with the water from the covering cloths.’

At that moment, Claude, on turning round, noticed Chaine on his knees near the stove, pulling the straw from the seat of an old stool to light the coals with.  He bade him good-morning, but only elicited a muttered growl, without succeeding in making him look up.