udy. The dining-room and kitchen were
on the left. Upstairs, his mother, who was now altogether bedridden,
occupied the larger room, while he and his wife contented themselves
with the other one, and a dressing-room that parted the two. That was
the whole place, a real cardboard box, with rooms like little drawers
separated by partitions as thin as paper. Withal, it was the abode of
work and hope, vast in comparison with the ordinary garrets of youth,
and already made bright by a beginning of comfort and luxury.

'There's room here, eh?' he exclaimed. 'Ah! it's a jolly sight more
comfortable than the Rue d'Enfer. You see that I've a room to myself.
And I have bought myself an oaken writing-table, and my wife made me
a present of that dwarf palm in that pot of old Rouen ware. Isn't it
swell, eh?'

His wife came in at that very moment. Tall, with a pleasant, tranquil
face and beautiful brown hair, she wore a large white apron over her
plainly made dress of black poplin; for although they had a regular
servant, she saw to the cooking, for she was proud of certain of
her dishes, and she put the household on a footing of middle-class
cleanliness and love of cheer.

She and Claude became old chums at once.

'Call him Claude, my darling. And you, old man, call her Henriette. No
madame nor monsieur, or I shall fine you five sous each time.'

They laughed, and she scampered away, being wanted in the kitchen to
look after a southern dish, a _bouillabaisse_, with which she wished
to surprise the Plassans friend. She had obtained the recipe from her
husband himself, and had become marvellously deft at it, so he said.

'Your wife is charming,' said Claude, 'and I see she spoils you.'

But Sandoz, seated at his table, with his elbows among such pages of the
book he was working at as he had written that morning, began to talk of
the first novel of his series, which he had published in October. Ah!
they had treated his poor book nicely! It had been a throttling,
a butchering, all the critics yelling at his heels, a broadside of
imprecations, as if he had murdered people in a wood. He himself laughed
at it, excited rather than otherwise, for he had sturdy shoulders and
the quiet bearing of a toiler who knows what he's after. Mere surprise
remained to him at the profound lack of intelligence shown by those
fellows the critics, whose articles, knocked off on the corner of some
table, bespattered him with mud, without appearing as m