he marks on the wall paper. He pasted on the window
panes transparent pictures representing boats floating down rivers,
flocks of birds flying across rosy skies, multi-colored ladies on
balconies, and processions of little black men over plains covered with
snow. His room, just big enough to sleep and sit down in, soon looked
like the inside of a Chinese lantern. He thought the effect
satisfactory, and passed the evening in pasting on the ceiling birds
that he had cut from the colored sheets remaining over. Then he went to
bed, lulled by the whistle of the trains.

He went home early the next day, carrying a paper bag of cakes and a
bottle of Madeira, purchased at the grocer's. He had to go out again to
buy two plates and two glasses, and arranged this collation on his
dressing-table, the dirty wood of which was covered by a napkin, the jug
and basin being hidden away beneath it.

Then he waited.

She came at about a quarter-past five; and, attracted by the bright
colors of the pictures, exclaimed: "Dear me, yours is a nice place. But
there are a lot of people about on the staircase."

He had clasped her in his arms, and was eagerly kissing the hair between
her forehead and her bonnet through her veil.

An hour and a half later he escorted her back to the cab-stand in the
Rue de Rome. When she was in the carriage he murmured: "Tuesday at the
same time?"

She replied: "Tuesday at the same time." And as it had grown dark, she
drew his head into the carriage and kissed him on the lips. Then the
driver, having whipped up his beast, she exclaimed: "Good-bye,
Pretty-boy," and the old vehicle started at the weary trot of its old
white horse.

For three weeks Duroy received Madame de Marelle in this way every two
or three days, now in the evening and now in the morning. While he was
expecting her one afternoon, a loud uproar on the stairs drew him to the
door. A child was crying. A man's angry voice shouted: "What is that
little devil howling about now?" The yelling and exasperated voice of a
woman replied: "It is that dirty hussy who comes to see the
penny-a-liner upstairs; she has upset Nicholas on the landing. As if
dabs like that, who pay no attention to children on the staircase,
should be allowed here."

Duroy drew back, distracted, for he could hear the rapid rustling of
skirts and a hurried step ascending from the story just beneath him.
There was soon a knock at the door, which he had reclosed. He opened it,