At the side there is a great yard, the court-yard of a fire station, with a gymnasium, whose masts and swings, vaguely seen from below, look like gibbets.  A bugle-call sounds in the yard, and its call takes the marquis thirty years back, reminds him of his campaigns in Algeria, the high ramparts of Constantine, the arrival of Mora at the regiment, and the duels, and the little parties.  Ah! how well life began then!  What a pity that those cursed cards—­ps—­ps—­ps—­Well, it’s something to have saved appearances.

“Your bath is ready, sir,” said the attendant.

At that moment, breathless and pale, Mme. Jenkins was entering Andre’s studio, where an instinct stronger than her will had brought her—­the wish to embrace her child before she died.  When she opened the door (he had given her a key) she was relieved to find that he was not there, and that she would have time to calm her excitement, increased as it was by the long walk to which she was so little accustomed.  No one was there.  But on the table was the little note which he always left when he went out, so that his mother, whose visits were becoming shorter and less frequent on account of the tyranny of Jenkins, could tell where he was, and wait for him or rejoin him easily.  The two had not ceased to love each other deeply, tenderly, in spite of the cruelty of life which forced into the relations of mother and son the clandestine precautions of an intrigue.

“I am at my rehearsal,” said the note to-day, “I shall be back at seven.”

This attention of the son, whom she had not seen for three weeks, yet who persisted in expecting her all the same, brought to the mother’s eyes the flood of tears which was suffocating her.  She felt as if she had just entered a new world.  This little room was so pure, so quiet, so elevated.  It kept the last rays of the setting sun on its windows, and seemed, with its bare walls, hewn from a corner of the sky.  It was adorned only with one great portrait, hers, nothing but hers, smiling in the place of honour, and again, down there, on the table in a gilt frame.  This humble little lodging, so light when all Paris was becoming dark, made an extraordinary impression on her, in spite of the poverty of its sparse furniture, scattered in two rooms, its common chintz, and its chimney garnished with two great bunches of hyacinths—­those flowers which are hawked round the streets in barrowsful.  What a good and worthy life she could have led by the side of her Andre!  And in her mind’s eye she had arranged her bed in one corner, her piano in another, she saw herself giving lessons, and caring for the home to which she was adding her share of ease and courageous gaiety.  How was it that she had not seen that her duty, the pride of her widowhood, was there?  By what blindness, what unworthy weakness?