ut
the street, the street with its passing purchasers and idlers, and its
overflowing holiday crowd, that on Sundays throng the side walks and
pavements. And how bored she was, wretched creature, in the country, how
she regretted the Paris life! Heurtebise, on the contrary, required
the country for his mental health. Paris still bewildered him like some
countrified boor on his first visit. His wife could not understand it,
and bitterly complained of her exile. By way of diversion she invited
her old acquaintances, and when her husband was absent they amused
themselves by turning over his papers, his memoranda, and the work he
was engaged upon.

"Do look, my dear, how funny it is. He shuts himself up to write this.
He paces up and down, talking to himself. As for me, I understand
nothing of what he does."

And then came endless regrets, and recollections of her past life.

"Ah! if I had known. When I think that I might have married Aubertot and
Fajon, the linen-drapers." She always spoke of the two partners at the
same time, as though she would have married the firm. Neither did she
restrain her feelings in her husband's presence.

[Illustration: p031-042]

She disturbed him, prevented all work, settling down with her friends in
the very room he was writing in, and filling it with the silly
chatter of idle women, who talked loud, full of disdain for a literary
profession which brought in so little, and whose most laborious hours
always resemble a capricious idleness. From time to time Heurtebise
strove to escape from the life which he felt was daily becoming more
dismal. He rushed off to Paris, hired a small room at an hotel, tried to
fancy he was a bachelor; but suddenly he thought of his son, and with a
desperate longing to embrace him hurried back the same evening into the
country.

[Illustration: p032-043]

On these occasions, in order to avoid the inevitable scene on his
return, he took a friend back with him and kept him there as long as he
could. As soon as he was no longer alone face to face with his wife,
his fine intellect awoke and his interrupted schemes of work little by
little and one after the other came back to him. But what anguish it was
when his friends left! He would have kept his guests for ever, clinging
to them by all the strength of his _ennui_. With what sadness would he
accompany us to the stand of the little suburban omnibus which bore us
back to Paris! and when we left, how slowly he