We enter, and ask the old man who has let us in and whose twinkling head is as threadbare as an old hat, if he has any wine to sell.

“No,” replies the old man, shaking his head, where a little white fluff crops out in places.

“No beer?  No coffee?  Anything at all—­”

“No, mes amis, nothing of anything.  We don’t belong here; we’re refugees, you know.”

“Then seeing there’s nothing, we’ll be off.”  We right-about face.  At least we have enjoyed for a moment the warmth which pervades the house and a sight of the lamp.  Already Volpatte has gained the threshold and his back is disappearing in the darkness.

But I espy an old woman, sunk in the depths of a chair in the other corner of the kitchen, who appears to have some busy occupation.

I pinch Paradis’ arm.  “There’s the belle of the house.  Shall we pay our addresses to her?”

Paradis makes a gesture of lordly indifference.  He has lost interest in women—­all those he has seen for a year and a half were not for him; and moreover, even when they would like to be his, he is equally uninterested.

“Young or old—­pooh!” he says to me, beginning to yawn.  For want of something to do and to lengthen the leaving, he goes up to the goodwife.  “Good-evening, gran’ma,” he mumbles, finishing his yawn.

“Good-evening, mes enfants,” quavers the old dame.  So near, we see her in detail.  She is shriveled, bent and bowed in her old bones, and the whole of her face is white as the dial of a clock.

And what is she doing?  Wedged between her chair and the edge of the table she is trying to clean some boots.  It is a heavy task for her infantile hands; their movements are uncertain, and her strokes with the brush sometimes go astray.  The boots, too, are very dirty indeed.

Seeing that we are watching her, she whispers to us that she must polish them well, and this evening too, for they are her little girl’s boots, who is a dressmaker in the town and goes off first thing in the morning.

Paradis has stooped to look at the boots more closely, and suddenly he puts his hand out towards them.  “Drop it, gran’ma; I’ll spruce up your lass’s trotter-cases for you in three secs.”

The old woman lodges an objection by shaking her head and her shoulders.  But Paradis takes the boots with authority, while the grandmother, paralyzed by her weakness, argues the question and opposes us with shadowy protest.

Paradis has taken a boot in each hand; he holds them gingerly and looks at them for a moment, and you would even say that he was squeezing them a little.

“Aren’t they small!” he says in a voice which is not what we hear in the usual way.

He has secured the brushes as well, and sets himself to wielding them with zealous carefulness.  I notice that he is smiling, with his eyes fixed on his work.

Then, when the mud has gone from the boots, he takes some polish on the end of the double-pointed brush and caresses them with it intently.