‘A nice marriage,’ said Sandoz, simply, by way of conclusion.

It was ten o’clock when the two friends rang at the iron gate of La Richaudiere.  The estate, with which they were not acquainted, amazed them.  There was a superb park, a garden laid out in the French style, with balustrades and steps spreading away in regal fashion; three huge conservatories and a colossal cascade—­quite a piece of folly, with its rocks brought from afar, and the quantity of cement and the number of conduits that had been employed in arranging it.  Indeed, the owner had sunk a fortune in it, out of sheer vanity.  But what struck the friends still more was the melancholy, deserted aspect of the domain; the gravel of the avenues carefully raked, with never a trace of footsteps; the distant expanses quite deserted, save that now and then a solitary gardener passed by; and the house looking lifeless, with all its windows closed, excepting two, which were barely set ajar.

However, a valet who had decided to show himself began to question them, and when he learnt that they wished to see ‘monsieur,’ he became insolent, and replied that ‘monsieur’ was behind the house in the gymnasium, and then went indoors again.

Sandoz and Claude followed a path which led them towards a lawn, and what they saw there made them pause.  Dubuche, who stood in front of a trapeze, was raising his arms to support his son, Gaston, a poor sickly boy who, at ten years of age, still had the slight, soft limbs of early childhood; while the girl, Alice, sat in a perambulator awaiting her turn.  She was so imperfectly developed that, although she was six years old, she could not yet walk.  The father, absorbed in his task, continued exercising the slim limbs of his little boy, swinging him backwards and forwards, and vainly trying to make him raise himself up by his wrists.  Then, as this slight effort sufficed to bring on perspiration, he removed the little fellow from the trapeze and rolled him in a rug.  And all this was done amid complete silence, alone under the far expanse of sky, his face wearing a look of distressful pity as he knelt there in that splendid park.  However, as he rose up he perceived the two friends.

‘What! it’s you?  On a Sunday, and without warning me!’

He had made a gesture of annoyance, and at once explained that the maid, the only woman to whom he could trust the children, went to Paris on Sundays, and that it was consequently impossible for him to leave Gaston and Alice for a minute.

‘I’ll wager that you came to lunch?’ he added.

As Claude gave Sandoz an imploring glance, the novelist made haste to answer: 

’No, no.  As it happens, we only have time enough to shake hands with you.  Claude had to come down here on a business matter.  He lived at Bennecourt, as you know.  And as I accompanied him, we took it into our heads to walk as far as here.  But there are people waiting for us, so don’t disturb yourself in the least.’