omes into
the children's bedroom. It's not right that we should be soaked here as
if we were on the high-way, even if those millionaires, the Seguins du
Hordel, do let us have this place for merely six hundred francs a year."

"Ah, yes! I should have forgotten that. I will call on them, I promise
you."

Then Mathieu took her in his arms, and there was no ending to their
leave-taking. He still lingered. She had begun to laugh again, while
giving him many a kiss in return for his own. There was all the love of
bounding health between them, the joy that springs from the most perfect
union, as when man and wife are but one both in flesh and in soul.

"Run off, run off, darling! Remember to tell Constance that, before
she goes into the country, she ought to run down here some Sunday with
Maurice."

"Yes, yes, I will tell her--till to-night, darling."

But he came back once more, caught her in a tight embrace, and pressed
to her lips a long, loving kiss, which she returned with her whole
heart. And then he hurried away.

He usually took an omnibus on his arrival at the Northern Railway
terminus. But on the days when only thirty sous remained at home he
bravely went through Paris on foot. It was, too, a very fine walk by way
of the Rue la Fayette, the Opera-house, the Boulevards, the Rue Royale,
and then, after the Place de la Concorde, the Cours la Reine, the Alma
bridge, and the Quai d'Orsay.

Beauchene's works were at the very end of the Quai d'Orsay, between the
Rue de la Federation and the Boulevard de Grenelle. There was hereabouts
a large square plot, at one end of which, facing the quay, stood a
handsome private house of brickwork with white stone dressings, that had
been erected by Leon Beauchene, father of Alexandre, the present master
of the works. From the balconies one could perceive the houses which
were perched aloft in the midst of greenery on the height of Passy,
beyond the Seine; whilst on the right arose the campanile of the
Trocadero palace. On one side, skirting the Rue de la Federation, one
could still see a garden and a little house, which had been the modest
dwelling of Leon Beauchene in the heroic days of desperate toil when he
had laid the foundations of his fortune. Then the factory buildings
and sheds, quite a mass of grayish structures, overtopped by two huge
chimneys, occupied both the back part of the ground and that which
fringed the Boulevard de Grenelle, the latter being shut off by
l