dressed and
well brushed, whose florid face and slight figure disappeared at last
in the convolutions of the staircase. M. Joyeuse had gone to his
office. Thereupon the whole flock of fugitives from the bird-cage ran
quickly up to the fourth floor, and, after locking the door, gathered
at an open window to catch another glimpse of the father. The little
man turned, kisses were exchanged at a distance, then the windows were
closed; the new, deserted house became quiet once more except for the
signs dancing their wild saraband in the wind on the unfinished street,
as if they too were stirred to gayety by all that manoeuvring. A moment
later the photographer on the fifth floor came down to hang his
show-case at the door, always the same, with the old gentleman in the
white cravat surrounded by his daughters in varied groups; then he went
upstairs again in his turn, and the perfect calm succeeding that little
matutinal tumult suggested the thought that "the father" and his young
ladies had returned to the show-case, where they would remain
motionless and smiling, until evening.

From Rue Saint-Ferdinand to Messieurs Hemerlingue and Son's, his
employers, M. Joyeuse had a walk of three-quarters of an hour. He held
his head erect and stiff, as if he were afraid of disarranging the
lovely bow of his cravat, tied by his daughters, or his hat, put on by
them; and when the oldest, always anxious and prudent, turned up the
collar of his overcoat just as he was going out, to protect him against
the vicious gust of wind at the street corner, M. Joyeuse, even when
the temperature was that of a hothouse, never turned it down until he
reached the office, like the lover fresh from his mistress's embrace,
who dares not stir for fear of losing the intoxicating perfume.

The excellent man, a widower for some years, lived for his children
alone, thought only of them, went out into the world surrounded by
those little blond heads, which fluttered confusedly around him as in a
painting of the Assumption. All his desires, all his plans related to
"the young ladies" and constantly returned to them, sometimes after
long detours; for M. Joyeuse--doubtless because of his very short neck
and his short figure, in which his bubbling blood had but a short
circuit to make--possessed an astonishingly fertile imagination. Ideas
formed in his mind as rapidly as threshed straw collects around the
hopper. At the office the figures kept his mind fixed by the