was a calamity which, in the first place, put off their
rupture, and, in the next place, upset all his plans. The notion of
being a father, moreover, appeared to him grotesque, inadmissible. But
why? If, in place of the Marechale----And his reverie became so deep
that he had a kind of hallucination. He saw there, on the carpet, in
front of the chimney-piece, a little girl. She resembled Madame Arnoux
and himself a little--dark, and yet fair, with two black eyes, very
large eyebrows, and a red ribbon in her curling hair. (Oh, how he would
have loved her!) And he seemed to hear her voice saying: "Papa! papa!"

Rosanette, who had just undressed herself, came across to him, and
noticing a tear in his eyelids, kissed him gravely on the forehead.

He arose, saying:

"By Jove, we mustn't kill this little one!"

Then she talked a lot of nonsense. To be sure, it would be a boy, and
its name would be Frederick. It would be necessary for her to begin
making its clothes; and, seeing her so happy, a feeling of pity for her
took possession of him. As he no longer cherished any anger against her,
he desired to know the explanation of the step she had recently taken.
She said it was because Mademoiselle Vatnaz had sent her that day a bill
which had been protested for some time past; and so she hastened to
Arnoux to get the money from him.

"I'd have given it to you!" said Frederick.

"It is a simpler course for me to get over there what belongs to me, and
to pay back to the other one her thousand francs."

"Is this really all you owe her?"

She answered:

"Certainly!"

On the following day, at nine o'clock in the evening (the hour specified
by the doorkeeper), Frederick repaired to Mademoiselle Vatnaz's
residence.

In the anteroom, he jostled against the furniture, which was heaped
together. But the sound of voices and of music guided him. He opened a
door, and tumbled into the middle of a rout. Standing up before a piano,
which a young lady in spectacles was fingering, Delmar, as serious as a
pontiff, was declaiming a humanitarian poem on prostitution; and his
hollow voice rolled to the accompaniment of the metallic chords. A row
of women sat close to the wall, attired, as a rule, in dark colours
without neck-bands or sleeves. Five or six men, all people of culture,
occupied seats here and there. In an armchair was seated a former writer
of fables, a mere wreck now; and the pungent odour of the two lamps was
intermingle