posters had been stuck on the walls of the old tin works, that
the Pocard scheme was going to transfigure. We looked at them the day
they were freshly brilliant in their wet varnish and their smell of
paste. We preferred the bill about Corsica, which showed seaside
landscapes, harbors with picturesque people in the foreground and a
purple mountain behind, all among garlands. And later, even when
stiffened and torn and cracking in the wind, that poster attracted us.

One evening, in the kitchen, when we had just come in--there are
memories which mysteriously outlive the rest--and Marie was lighting
the fire, with her hat on and her hands wiped out in the twilight by
the grime of the coal, she said, "We'll make that trip later!"

Sometimes it happened that we went out, she and I, during the week. I
looked about me and shared my thoughts with her. Never very talkative,
she would listen to me. Coming out of the Place de l'Eglise, which
used to affect us so much not long ago, we often used to meet Jean and
Genevieve Trompson, near the sunken post where an old jam pot lies on
the ground. Everybody used to say of these two, "They'll separate,
you'll see; that's what comes of loving each other too much; it was
madness, I always said so." And hearing these things, unfortunately
true, Marie would murmur, with a sort of obstinate gentleness, "Love is
sacred."

Returning, not far from the anachronistic and clandestine Eudo's lair,
we used to hear the coughing parrot. That old bird, worn threadbare,
and of a faded green hue, never ceased to imitate the fits of coughing
which two years before had torn Adolphe Piot's lungs, who died in the
midst of his family under such sad circumstances. Those days we would
return with our ears full of the obstinate clamor of that recording
bird, which had set itself fiercely to immortalize the noise that
passed for a moment through the world, and toss the echoes of an
ancient calamity, of which everybody had ceased to think.

Almost the only people about us are Marthe, my little sister-in-law,
who is six years old, and resembles her sister like a surprising
miniature; my father-in-law, who is gradually annihilating himself; and
Crillon. This last lives always contented in the same shop while time
goes by, like his father and his grandfather, and the cobbler of the
fable, his eternal ancestor. Under his square cap, on the edge of his
glazed niche, he soliloquizes, while he smokes the s