the cloth was not laid. Then, having
sat down between Christine and little Jacques, he swallowed his soup and
devoured a plateful of potatoes.

'Is that all?' he asked, when he had finished. 'You might as well have
added a scrap of meat. Did you have to buy some boots again?'

She stammered, not daring to tell him the truth, but hurt at heart by
this injustice. He, however, went on chaffing her about the coppers
she juggled away to buy herself things with; and getting more and more
excited, amid the egotism of feelings which he seemingly wished to keep
to himself, he suddenly flew out at Jacques.

'Hold your noise, you brat!--you drive one mad.'

The child, forgetting all about his dinner, had been tapping the edge
of his plate with his spoon, his eyes full of mirthful delight at this
music.

'Jacques, be quiet,' scoldingly said his mother, in her turn. 'Let your
father have his dinner in peace.'

Then the little one, abashed, at once became very quiet, and relapsed
into gloomy stillness, with his lustreless eyes fixed on his potatoes,
which, however, he did not eat.

Claude made a show of stuffing himself with cheese, while Christine,
quite grieved, offered to fetch some cold meat from a ham and beef shop;
but he declined, and prevented her going by words that pained her still
more. Then, the table having been cleared, they all sat round the lamp
for the evening, she sewing, the little one turning over a picture-book
in silence, and Claude drumming on the table with his fingers, his mind
the while wandering back to the spot whence he had come. Suddenly he
rose, sat down again with a sheet of paper and a pencil, and began
sketching rapidly, in the vivid circle of light that fell from under the
lamp-shade. And such was his longing to give outward expression to the
tumultuous ideas beating in his skull, that soon this sketch did not
suffice for his relief. On the contrary, it goaded him on, and he
finished by unburthening his mind in a flood of words. He would have
shouted to the walls; and if he addressed himself to his wife it was
because she happened to be there.

'Look, that's what we saw yesterday. It's magnificent. I spent three
hours there to-day. I've got hold of what I want--something wonderful,
something that'll knock everything else to pieces. Just look! I station
myself under the bridge; in the immediate foreground I have the Port of
St. Nicolas, with its crane, its lighters which are being unloaded,