self with a kind of religious awe, took hold of his arm and dragged
him away, as if she had felt that some great danger was threatening him.

'Let us go home. You are doing yourself harm. I want to get back.'

At her touch he started like a man disturbed in sleep. Then, turning his
head to take a last look, he muttered: 'Ah! heavens! Ah! heavens, how
beautiful!'

He allowed himself to be led away. But throughout the evening, first
at dinner, afterwards beside the stove, and until he went to bed, he
remained like one dazed, so deep in his cogitations that he did not
utter half a dozen sentences. And Christine, failing to draw from him
any answer to her questions, at last became silent also. She looked
at him anxiously; was it the approach of some serious illness, had he
inhaled some bad air whilst standing midway across the bridge yonder?
His eyes stared vaguely into space, his face flushed as if with
some inner straining. One would have thought it the mute travail of
germination, as if something were springing into life within him.

The next morning, immediately after breakfast, he set off, and Christine
spent a very sorrowful day, for although she had become more easy in
mind on hearing him whistle some of his old southern tunes as he got up,
she was worried by another matter, which she had not mentioned to him
for fear of damping his spirits again. That day they would for the first
time lack everything; a whole week separated them from the date when
their little income would fall due, and she had spent her last copper
that morning. She had nothing left for the evening, not even the
wherewithal to buy a loaf. To whom could she apply? How could she manage
to hide the truth any longer from him when he came home hungry? She
made up her mind to pledge the black silk dress which Madame Vanzade
had formerly given her, but it was with a heavy heart; she trembled with
fear and shame at the idea of the pawnshop, that familiar resort of the
poor which she had never as yet entered. And she was tortured by such
apprehension about the future, that from the ten francs which were lent
her she only took enough to make a sorrel soup and a stew of potatoes.
On coming out of the pawn-office, a meeting with somebody she knew had
given her the finishing stroke.

As it happened, Claude came home very late, gesticulating merrily, and
his eyes very bright, as if he were excited by some secret joy; he was
very hungry, and grumbled because