Homaises, in spite of
their spirit, could not stir without some one watching them; at the
slightest cold their father stuffed them with pectorals; and until they
were turned four they all, without pity, had to wear wadded
head-protectors. This, it is true, was a fancy of Madame Homais's; her
husband was inwardly afflicted at it. Fearing the possible consequences
of such compression to the intellectual organs, he even went so far as
to say to her, "Do you want to make Caribs or Botocudos of them?"

Charles, however, had several times tried to interrupt the conversation.
"I should like to speak to you," he had whispered in the clerk's ear,
who went upstairs in front of him.

"Can he suspect anything?" Leon asked himself. His heart beat, and he
racked his brain with surmises.

At last, Charles, having shut the door, asked him to see himself what
would be the price at Rouen of a fine daguerreotype. It was a
sentimental surprise he intended for his wife, a delicate attention--his
portrait in a frock-coat. But he wanted first to know how much it would
be. The inquiries would not put Monsieur Leon out, since he went to town
almost every week.

Why? Monsieur Homais suspected some "young man's affair" at the bottom
of it, an intrigue. But he was mistaken. Leon was after no love-making.
He was sadder than ever, as Madame Lefrancois saw from the amount of
food he left on his plate. To find out more about it she questioned the
tax-collector. Binet answered roughly that he wasn't paid by the
police.

All the same, his companion seemed very strange to him, for Leon often
threw himself back in his chair, and stretching out his arms, complained
vaguely of life.

"It's because you don't take enough recreation," said the collector.

"What recreation?"

"If I were you I'd have a lathe."

"But I don't know how to turn," answered the clerk.

"Ah! that's true," said the other, rubbing his chin with an air of
mingled contempt and satisfaction.

Leon was weary of loving without any result; moreover, he was beginning
to feel that depression caused by the repetition of the same kind of
life, when no interest inspires and no hope sustains it. He was so bored
with Yonville and the Yonvillers, that the sight of certain persons, of
certain houses, irritated him beyond endurance; and the chemist, good
fellow though he was, was becoming absolutely unbearable to him. Yet the
prospect of a new condition of life frightened as much as it sed