lower, slowly rolling towards the distant roofs when once they had passed the Pont Notre-Dame in front of the widening stream.  In no ancient forest, on no mountain road, beyond no grassy plain will there ever be such triumphal sunsets as behind the cupola of the Institute.  It is there one sees Paris retiring to rest in all her glory.  At each of their walks the aspect of the conflagration changed; fresh furnaces added their glow to the crown of flames.  One evening, when a shower had surprised them, the sun, showing behind the downpour, lit up the whole rain cloud, and upon their heads there fell a spray of glowing water, irisated with pink and azure.  On the days when the sky was clear, however, the sun, like a fiery ball, descended majestically in an unruffled sapphire lake; for a moment the black cupola of the Institute seemed to cut away part of it and make it look like the waning moon; then the globe assumed a violet tinge and at last became submerged in the lake, which had turned blood-red.  Already, in February, the planet described a wider curve, and fell straight into the Seine, which seemed to seethe on the horizon as at the contact of red-hot iron.  However, the grander scenes, the vast fairy pictures of space only blazed on cloudy evenings.  Then, according to the whim of the wind, there were seas of sulphur splashing against coral reefs; there were palaces and towers, marvels of architecture, piled upon one another, burning and crumbling, and throwing torrents of lava from their many gaps; or else the orb which had disappeared, hidden by a veil of clouds, suddenly transpierced that veil with such a press of light that shafts of sparks shot forth from one horizon to the other, showing as plainly as a volley of golden arrows.  And then the twilight fell, and they said good-bye to each other, while their eyes were still full of the final dazzlement.  They felt that triumphal Paris was the accomplice of the joy which they could not exhaust, the joy of ever resuming together that walk beside the old stone parapets.

One day, however, there happened what Claude had always secretly feared.  Christine no longer seemed to believe in the possibility of meeting anybody who knew her.  In fact, was there such a person?  She would always pass along like this, remaining altogether unknown.  He, however, thought of his own friends, and at times felt a kind of tremor when he fancied he recognised in the distance the back of some acquaintance.  He was troubled by a feeling of delicacy; the idea that somebody might stare at the girl, approach them, and perhaps begin to joke, gave him intolerable worry.  And that very evening, as she was close beside him on his arm, and they were approaching the Pont des Arts, he fell upon Sandoz and Dubuche, who were coming down the steps of the bridge.  It was impossible to avoid them, they were almost face to face; besides, his friends must have seen him, for they smiled.  Claude, very pale, kept advancing, and he thought it