s me.
Say you forgive me."

"Dear child--I forget," he answered, as gently as a father. And
Felicite, on her way upstairs, heard him through the half-open door, and
smiled.

PART THREE

CHAPTER ONE

Madame Bathilde Chalumeau, her black cotton frock tucked up round her
plump figure over her scarlet-flannel petticoat, was dusting the windows
of her shop in the Rue Dessous l'Arche.

It was only six o'clock and the air as yet was cool, but the trees
leaning over the wall of Avocat Millot's garden opposite were grey with
dust and parched with the heat of an exceptionally warm September.

Madame Chalumeau, who was standing on a chair energetically flopping her
feather-brush over the panes of her double shop-front, sighed as she
looked up at the brilliant sky. "It is to be a heat of the devil," she
thought.

Next door to her, _chez_ Bouillard, nothing was stirring. Poor Desire,
being a widower, was apt to oversleep himself, and it was bad for his
trade. Even now a small child in a black smock stood at his door,
waiting to fill his carafe with the black wine that had stained its
sides to such a beautiful violet hue.

"_Bonjour_, Christophe----"

"_Bonjour_, madame."

"You want wine?"

"_Oui_, madame."

"Then wait a moment and I will get it for thee."

Good Madame Chalumeau climbed down from her chair with a generous
display of fat, black woollen legs and unpinned her skirt.

"_Bon!_ M. Bouillard sleeps the fat morning, but I can get in, and you
will get a beating if you keep your excellent father waiting."

Taking the carafe, she passed under the archway that separated her house
from her neighbour's, and, her broad figure actually touching the wall
on either side, went to Bouillard's side-door and entered the house.

When she came out, the carafe full, Bouillard himself, fat and rosy with
sleep, was standing in his shop door. "Madame Bathilde, good day to you!
So you have again saved me from a commercial loss!" Desire Bouillard had
a witty way with him, his far shrewder neighbour thought--had thought
for years.

And then, quite without consciousness or amusement, they enacted the
little comedy that had been played by them every morning since poor
Madame Bouillard died.

"And your morning coffee, M. Bouillard?"

"_Tiens, mon cafe! Helas non_, Madame Bathilde, I am but this moment
awake--what time is it?"

Just inside the door of Madame Chalumeau's shop, Au Gout Parisien, hung
a clock.