He allowed himself to be led away.  But throughout the evening, first at dinner, afterwards beside the stove, and until he went to bed, he remained like one dazed, so deep in his cogitations that he did not utter half a dozen sentences.  And Christine, failing to draw from him any answer to her questions, at last became silent also.  She looked at him anxiously; was it the approach of some serious illness, had he inhaled some bad air whilst standing midway across the bridge yonder?  His eyes stared vaguely into space, his face flushed as if with some inner straining.  One would have thought it the mute travail of germination, as if something were springing into life within him.

The next morning, immediately after breakfast, he set off, and Christine spent a very sorrowful day, for although she had become more easy in mind on hearing him whistle some of his old southern tunes as he got up, she was worried by another matter, which she had not mentioned to him for fear of damping his spirits again.  That day they would for the first time lack everything; a whole week separated them from the date when their little income would fall due, and she had spent her last copper that morning.  She had nothing left for the evening, not even the wherewithal to buy a loaf.  To whom could she apply?  How could she manage to hide the truth any longer from him when he came home hungry?  She made up her mind to pledge the black silk dress which Madame Vanzade had formerly given her, but it was with a heavy heart; she trembled with fear and shame at the idea of the pawnshop, that familiar resort of the poor which she had never as yet entered.  And she was tortured by such apprehension about the future, that from the ten francs which were lent her she only took enough to make a sorrel soup and a stew of potatoes.  On coming out of the pawn-office, a meeting with somebody she knew had given her the finishing stroke.

As it happened, Claude came home very late, gesticulating merrily, and his eyes very bright, as if he were excited by some secret joy; he was very hungry, and grumbled because the cloth was not laid.  Then, having sat down between Christine and little Jacques, he swallowed his soup and devoured a plateful of potatoes.

‘Is that all?’ he asked, when he had finished.  ’You might as well have added a scrap of meat.  Did you have to buy some boots again?’

She stammered, not daring to tell him the truth, but hurt at heart by this injustice.  He, however, went on chaffing her about the coppers she juggled away to buy herself things with; and getting more and more excited, amid the egotism of feelings which he seemingly wished to keep to himself, he suddenly flew out at Jacques.

‘Hold your noise, you brat!—­you drive one mad.’

The child, forgetting all about his dinner, had been tapping the edge of his plate with his spoon, his eyes full of mirthful delight at this music.

‘Jacques, be quiet,’ scoldingly said his mother, in her turn.  ’Let your father have his dinner in peace.’