When he got to the Place de l’Hotel de Ville, however, a fresh idea made him quicken his pace.  Why had he not thought of Fagerolles?  Fagerolles was a nice fellow, gay, and by no means a fool, although he studied at the School of Arts.  One could talk with him, even when he defended bad painting.  If he had lunched at his father’s, in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, he must certainly still be there.

On entering the narrow street, Claude felt a sensation of refreshing coolness come over him.  In the sun it had grown very warm, and moisture rose from the pavement, which, however bright the sky, remained damp and greasy beneath the constant tramping of the pedestrians.  Every minute, when a push obliged Claude to leave the footwalk, he found himself in danger of being knocked down by trucks or vans.  Still the street amused him, with its straggling houses out of line, their flat frontages chequered with signboards up to the very eaves, and pierced with small windows, whence came the hum of every kind of handiwork that can be carried on at home.  In one of the narrowest parts of the street a small newspaper shop made him stop.  It was betwixt a hairdresser’s and a tripeseller’s, and had an outdoor display of idiotic prints, romantic balderdash mixed with filthy caricatures fit for a barrack-room.  In front of these ‘pictures,’ a lank hobbledehoy stood lost in reverie, while two young girls nudged each other and jeered.  He felt inclined to slap their faces, but he hurried across the road, for Fagerolles’ house happened to be opposite.  It was a dark old tenement, standing forward from the others, and was bespattered like them with the mud from the gutters.  As an omnibus came up, Claude barely had time to jump upon the foot pavement, there reduced to the proportions of a simple ledge; the wheels brushed against his chest, and he was drenched to his knees.

M. Fagerolles, senior, a manufacturer of artistic zinc-work, had his workshops on the ground floor of the building, and having converted two large front rooms on the first floor into a warehouse, he personally occupied a small, dark, cellar-like apartment overlooking the courtyard.  It was there that his son Henri had grown up, like a true specimen of the flora of the Paris streets, at the edge of that narrow pavement constantly struck by the omnibus wheels, always soddened by the gutter water, and opposite the print and newspaper shop, flanked by the barber’s and tripeseller’s.  At first his father had made an ornamental draughtsman of him for personal use.  But when the lad had developed higher ambition, taking to painting proper, and talking about the School of Arts, there had been quarrels, blows, a series of separations and reconciliations.  Even now, although Henri had already achieved some successes, the manufacturer of artistic zinc-work, while letting him have his will, treated him harshly, like a lad who was spoiling his career.