d when,
incapable of further effort, he whimpers, he hears, terrified, in his
own voice, the lamentations of the children crying for their mothers and
pleading for mercy."

* * * * *

And Durtal, coming slowly out of the vision he had conjured up, closed
his notebook and remarked, "Rather petty, my own spiritual conflict
regarding a woman whose sin--like my own, to be sure--is commonplace and
bourgeois."

CHAPTER XII

"Easy to find an excuse for this visit, though it will seem strange to
Chantelouve, whom I have neglected for months," said Durtal on his way
toward the rue Bagneux. "Supposing he is home this evening--and he
probably isn't, because surely Hyacinthe will have seen to that--I can
tell him that I have learned of his illness through Des Hermies and that
I have come to see how he is getting along."

He paused on the stoop of the building in which Chantelouve lived. At
each side and over the door were these antique lamps with reflectors,
surmounted by a sort of casque of sheet iron painted green. There was an
old iron balustrade, very wide, and the steps, with wooden sides, were
paved with red tile. About this house there was a sepulchral and also
clerical odour, yet there was also something homelike--though a little
too imposing--about it such as is not to be found in the cardboard
houses they build nowadays. You could see at a glance that it did not
harbour the apartment house promiscuities: decent, respectable couples
with kept women for neighbours. The house pleased him, and he considered
Hyacinthe the more desirable for her substantial environment.

He rang at a first-floor apartment. A maid led him through a long hall
into a sitting-room. He noticed, at a glance, that nothing had changed
since his last visit. It was the same vast, high-ceilinged room with
windows reaching to heaven. There was the huge fireplace; on the
mantelpiece the same reproduction, reduced, in bronze, of Fremiet's
Jeanne d'Arc, between the two globe lamps of Japanese porcelain. He
recognized the grand piano, the table loaded with albums, the divan, the
chairs in the style of Louis XV with tapestried covers. In front of
every window there were imitation Chinese vases, mounted on tripods of
imitation ebony and containing sickly palms. On the walls were religious
pictures, without expression, and a portrait of Chantelouve in his
youth, three-quarter length, his hand resting on a pile of his