take a cab?"

He began to scold her smilingly:

"Is that the way you save money? A cab for a five minutes' ride at six
cents a minute! You would deprive yourself of nothing."

"That's so," she said, a little embarrassed.

A big omnibus was passing by, drawn by three big horses, which were
trotting along. Lebrument called out:

"Conductor! Conductor!"

The heavy carriage stopped. And the young lawyer, pushing his wife, said
to her quickly:

"Go inside; I'm going up on top, so that I may smoke at least one
cigarette before lunch."

She had no time to answer. The conductor, who had seized her by the arm
to help her up the step, pushed her inside, and she fell into a seat,
bewildered, looking through the back window at the feet of her husband as
he climbed up to the top of the vehicle.

And she sat there motionless, between a fat man who smelled of cheap
tobacco and an old woman who smelled of garlic.

All the other passengers were lined up in silence--a grocer's boy, a
young girl, a soldier, a gentleman with gold-rimmed spectacles and a big
silk hat, two ladies with a self-satisfied and crabbed look, which seemed
to say: "We are riding in this thing, but we don't have to," two sisters
of charity and an undertaker. They looked like a collection of
caricatures.

The jolting of the wagon made them wag their heads and the shaking of the
wheels seemed to stupefy them--they all looked as though they were
asleep.

The young woman remained motionless.

"Why didn't he come inside with me?" she was saying to herself. An
unaccountable sadness seemed to be hanging over her. He really need not
have acted so.

The sisters motioned to the conductor to stop, and they got off one after
the other, leaving in their wake the pungent smell of camphor. The bus
started tip and soon stopped again. And in got a cook, red-faced and out
of breath. She sat down and placed her basket of provisions on her knees.
A strong odor of dish-water filled the vehicle.

"It's further than I imagined," thought Jeanne.

The undertaker went out, and was replaced by a coachman who seemed to
bring the atmosphere of the stable with him. The young girl had as a
successor a messenger, the odor of whose feet showed that he was
continually walking.

The lawyer's wife began to feel ill at ease, nauseated, ready to cry
without knowing why.

Other persons left and others entered. The stage went on through
interminable streets, stopping at stations a