The hovel in the Impasse Saint-Mittre consisted, in the first place, of a large room into which the street door opened.  The only pieces of furniture in this room, which had a stone floor, and served both as a kitchen and a dining-room, were some straw-seated chairs, a table on trestles, and an old coffer which Adelaide had converted into a sofa, by spreading a piece of woollen stuff over the lid.  In the left hand corner of the large fireplace stood a plaster image of the Holy Virgin, surrounded by artificial flowers; she is the traditional good mother of all old Provencal women, however irreligious they may be.  A passage led from the room into a yard situated at the rear of the house; in this yard there was a well.  Aunt Dide’s bedroom was on the left side of the passage; it was a little apartment containing an iron bedstead and one chair; Silvere slept in a still smaller room on the right hand side, just large enough for a trestle bedstead; and he had been obliged to plan a set of shelves, reaching up to the ceiling, to keep by him all those dear odd volumes which he saved his sous to purchase from a neighbouring general dealer.  When he read at night-time, he would hang his lamp on a nail at the head of the bed.  If his grandmother had an attack, he merely had to leap out at the first gasp to be at her side in a moment.

The young man led the life of a child.  He passed his existence in this lonely spot.  Like his father, he felt a dislike for taverns and Sunday strolling.  His mates wounded his delicate susceptibilities by their coarse jokes.  He preferred to read, to rack his rain over some simple geometrical problem.  Since aunt Dide had entrusted him with the little household commissions she did not go out at all, but ceased all intercourse even with her family.  The young man sometimes thought of her forlornness; he reflected that the poor old woman lived but a few steps from the children who strove to forget her, as though she were dead; and this made him love her all the more, for himself and for the others.  When he at times entertained a vague idea that aunt Dide might be expiating some former transgressions, he would say to himself:  “I was born to pardon her.”

A nature such as Silvere’s, ardent yet self-restrained, naturally cherished the most exalted republican ideas.  At night, in his little hovel, Silvere would again and again read a work of Rousseau’s which he had picked up at the neighbouring dealer’s among a number of old locks.  The reading of this book kept him awake till daylight.  Amidst his dream of universal happiness so dear to the poor, the words liberty, equality, fraternity, rang in his ears like those sonorous sacred calls of the bells, at the sound of which the faithful fall upon their knees.  When, therefore, he learnt that the Republic had just been proclaimed in France he fancied that the whole world would enjoy a life of celestial beatitude.  His knowledge, though imperfect, made him see farther than other workmen; his aspirations did not stop at daily bread; but his extreme ingenuousness, his complete ignorance of mankind, kept him in the dreamland of theory, a Garden of Eden where universal justice reigned.  His paradise was for a long time a delightful spot in which he forgot himself.