Thereupon the dog accompanied them as far as the pavilion, wagging his tail and barking joyously.  A young servant-girl had come out with a lantern, which she fastened to the gate, in order to light up the breakneck steps.  In the garden there was simply a small central lawn, on which there stood a large plum tree, diffusing a shade around that rotted the grass; and just in front of the low house, which showed only three windows, there stretched an arbour of Virginia creeper, with a brand-new seat shining there as an ornament amid the winter showers, pending the advent of the summer sun.

‘Come in,’ repeated Sandoz.

On the right-hand side of the hall he ushered Claude into the parlour, which he had turned into a study.  The dining-room and kitchen were on the left.  Upstairs, his mother, who was now altogether bedridden, occupied the larger room, while he and his wife contented themselves with the other one, and a dressing-room that parted the two.  That was the whole place, a real cardboard box, with rooms like little drawers separated by partitions as thin as paper.  Withal, it was the abode of work and hope, vast in comparison with the ordinary garrets of youth, and already made bright by a beginning of comfort and luxury.

‘There’s room here, eh?’ he exclaimed.  ’Ah! it’s a jolly sight more comfortable than the Rue d’Enfer.  You see that I’ve a room to myself.  And I have bought myself an oaken writing-table, and my wife made me a present of that dwarf palm in that pot of old Rouen ware.  Isn’t it swell, eh?’

His wife came in at that very moment.  Tall, with a pleasant, tranquil face and beautiful brown hair, she wore a large white apron over her plainly made dress of black poplin; for although they had a regular servant, she saw to the cooking, for she was proud of certain of her dishes, and she put the household on a footing of middle-class cleanliness and love of cheer.

She and Claude became old chums at once.

’Call him Claude, my darling.  And you, old man, call her Henriette.  No madame nor monsieur, or I shall fine you five sous each time.’

They laughed, and she scampered away, being wanted in the kitchen to look after a southern dish, a bouillabaisse, with which she wished to surprise the Plassans friend.  She had obtained the recipe from her husband himself, and had become marvellously deft at it, so he said.

‘Your wife is charming,’ said Claude, ‘and I see she spoils you.’

But Sandoz, seated at his table, with his elbows among such pages of the book he was working at as he had written that morning, began to talk of the first novel of his series, which he had published in October.  Ah! they had treated his poor book nicely!  It had been a throttling, a butchering, all the critics yelling at his heels, a broadside of imprecations, as if he had murdered people in a wood.  He himself laughed at it, excited rather than otherwise, for he