ow.

The voluptuousness of his grief was, however, incomplete, for he had no
one near him to share it, and he paid visits to Madame Lefrancois to be
able to speak of her.

But the landlady only listened with half an ear, having troubles
like himself. For Lheureux had at last established the "Favorites du
Commerce," and Hivert, who enjoyed a great reputation for doing errands,
insisted on a rise of wages, and was threatening to go over "to the
opposition shop."

One day when he had gone to the market at Argueil to sell his horse--his
last resource--he met Rodolphe.

They both turned pale when they caught sight of one another. Rodolphe,
who had only sent his card, first stammered some apologies, then grew
bolder, and even pushed his assurance (it was in the month of August and
very hot) to the length of inviting him to have a bottle of beer at the
public-house.

Leaning on the table opposite him, he chewed his cigar as he talked, and
Charles was lost in reverie at this face that she had loved. He seemed
to see again something of her in it. It was a marvel to him. He would
have liked to have been this man.

The other went on talking agriculture, cattle, pasturage, filling out
with banal phrases all the gaps where an allusion might slip in. Charles
was not listening to him; Rodolphe noticed it, and he followed the
succession of memories that crossed his face. This gradually grew
redder; the nostrils throbbed fast, the lips quivered. There was at
last a moment when Charles, full of a sombre fury, fixed his eyes on
Rodolphe, who, in something of fear, stopped talking. But soon the same
look of weary lassitude came back to his face.

"I don't blame you," he said.

Rodolphe was dumb. And Charles, his head in his hands, went on in a
broken voice, and with the resigned accent of infinite sorrow--

"No, I don't blame you now."

He even added a fine phrase, the only one he ever made--

"It is the fault of fatality!"

Rodolphe, who had managed the fatality, thought the remark very offhand
from a man in his position, comic even, and a little mean.

The next day Charles went to sit down on the seat in the arbour. Rays
of light were straying through the trellis, the vine leaves threw their
shadows on the sand, the jasmines perfumed the air, the heavens were
blue, Spanish flies buzzed round the lilies in bloom, and Charles was
suffocating like a youth beneath the vague love influences that filled
his aching heart.

At