rgetically denied it; they burst out in protestations.
Fagerolles, the young master! What a good joke!

'Oh, you are turning your back upon us, we know it,' said Mahoudeau.
'There's no fear of your writing a line about us nowadays.'

'Well, my dear fellow,' answered Jory, vexed, 'everything I write about
you is cut out. You make yourselves hated everywhere. Ah! if I had a
paper of my own!'

Henriette came back, and Sandoz's eyes having sought hers, she answered
him with a glance and the same affectionate, quiet smile that he had
shown when leaving his mother's room in former times. Then she summoned
them all. They sat down again round the table while she made the tea and
poured it out. But the gathering grew sad, benumbed, as it were, with
lassitude. Sandoz vainly tried a diversion by admitting Bertrand, the
big dog, who grovelled at sight of the sugar-basin, and ended by
going to sleep near the stove, where he snored like a man. Since the
discussion on Fagerolles there had been intervals of silence, a kind of
bored irritation, which fell heavily upon them amidst the dense tobacco
smoke. And, in fact, Gagniere felt so out of sorts that he left the
table for a moment to seat himself at the piano, murdering some passages
from Wagner in a subdued key, with the stiff fingers of an amateur who
tries his first scale at thirty.

Towards eleven o'clock Dubuche, arriving at last, contributed the
finishing touch to the general frost. He had made his escape from a ball
to fulfil what he considered a remaining duty towards his old comrades;
and his dress-coat, his white necktie, his fat, pale face, all
proclaimed his vexation at having come, the importance he attached to
the sacrifice, and the fear he felt of compromising his new position. He
avoided mentioning his wife, so that he might not have to bring her to
Sandoz's. When he had shaken hands with Claude, without showing more
emotion than if he had met him the day before, he declined a cup of
tea and spoke slowly--puffing out his cheeks the while--of his worry in
settling in a brand-new house, and of the work that had overwhelmed
him since he had attended to the business of his father-in-law, who was
building a whole street near the Parc Monceau.

Then Claude distinctly felt that something had snapped. Had life then
already carried away the evenings of former days, those evenings so
fraternal in their very violence, when nothing had as yet separated
them, when not one of t