to his room, he felt afraid to go to bed. He was
suffering from one of those nervous attacks which sometimes plunged him
into horrible nightmares until dawn. On the previous day he had been to
Clamart to attend the funeral of Monsieur Verlaque, who had died after
terrible sufferings; and he still felt sad at the recollection of the
narrow coffin which he had seen lowered into the earth. Nor could he
banish from his mind the image of Madame Verlaque, who, with a tearful
voice, though there was not a tear in her eyes, kept following him and
speaking to him about the coffin, which was not paid for, and of the
cost of the funeral, which she was quite at a loss about, as she had
not a copper in the place, for the druggist, on hearing of her husband's
death on the previous day, had insisted upon his bill being paid. So
Florent had been obliged to advance the money for the coffin and other
funeral expenses, and had even given the gratuities to the mutes.
Just as he was going away, Madame Verlaque looked at him with such a
heartbroken expression that he left her twenty francs.

And now Monsieur Verlaque's death worried him very much. It affected
his situation in the markets. He might lose his berth, or perhaps
be formally appointed inspector. In either case he foresaw vexatious
complications which might arouse the suspicions of the police. He would
have been delighted if the insurrection could have broken out the very
next day, so that he might at once have tossed the laced cap of his
inspectorship into the streets. With his mind full of harassing thoughts
like these, he stepped out upon the balcony, as though soliciting of the
warm night some whiff of air to cool his fevered brow. The rain had
laid the wind, and a stormy heat still reigned beneath the deep blue,
cloudless heavens. The markets, washed by the downpour, spread out below
him, similar in hue to the sky, and, like the sky, studded with the
yellow stars of their gas lamps.

Leaning on the iron balustrade, Florent recollected that sooner or later
he would certainly be punished for having accepted the inspectorship. It
seemed to lie like a stain on his life. He had become an official of the
Prefecture, forswearing himself, serving the Empire in spite of all
the oaths he had taken in his exile. His anxiety to please Lisa, the
charitable purpose to which he had devoted the salary he received, the
just and scrupulous manner in which he had always struggled to carry
out