Once in the Rue Nollet, Dubuche immediately hailed a cab, in which he drove away.  The other four walked together as far as the outer boulevards, scarcely exchanging a word, looking dazed, as it were, at having been in each other’s company so long.  At last Jory decamped, pretending that some proofs were waiting for him at the office of his newspaper.  Then Gagniere mechanically stopped Claude in front of the Cafe Baudequin, the gas of which was still blazing away.  Mahoudeau refused to go in, and went off alone, sadly ruminating, towards the Rue du Cherche-Midi.

Without knowing how, Claude found himself seated at their old table, opposite Gagniere, who was silent.  The cafe had not changed.  The friends still met there of a Sunday, showing a deal of fervour, in fact, since Sandoz had lived in the neighbourhood; but the band was now lost amid a flood of new-comers; it was slowly being submerged by the increasing triteness of the young disciples of the ‘open air.’  At that hour of night, however, the establishment was getting empty.  Three young painters, whom Claude did not know, came to shake hands with him as they went off; and then there merely remained a petty retired tradesman of the neighbourhood, asleep in front of a saucer.

Gagniere, quite at his ease, as if he had been at home, absolutely indifferent to the yawns of the solitary waiter, who was stretching his arms, glanced towards Claude, but without seeing him, for his eyes were dim.

‘By the way,’ said the latter, ’what were you explaining to Mahoudeau this evening?  Yes, about the red of a flag turning yellowish amid the blue of the sky.  That was it, eh?  You are studying the theory of complementary colours.’

But the other did not answer.  He took up his glass of beer, set it down again without tasting its contents, and with an ecstatic smile ended by muttering: 

’Haydn has all the gracefulness of a rhetorician—­his is a gentle music, quivering like the voice of a great-grandmother in powdered hair.  Mozart, he’s the precursory genius—­the first who endowed an orchestra with an individual voice; and those two will live mostly because they created Beethoven.  Ah, Beethoven! power and strength amidst serene suffering, Michael Angelo at the tomb of the Medici!  A heroic logician, a kneader of human brains; for the symphony, with choral accompaniments, was the starting-point of all the great ones of to-day!’

The waiter, tired of waiting, began to turn off the gas, wearily dragging his feet along as he did so.  Mournfulness pervaded the deserted room, dirty with saliva and cigar ends, and reeking of spilt drink; while from the hushed boulevard the only sound that came was the distant blubbering of some drunkard.

Gagniere, still in the clouds, however, continued to ride his hobby-horse.