; I want you to kiss them yourself."

But when Celeste appeared in answer to the bell, she announced
that Monsieur Gaston and Mademoiselle Lucie had gone out with their
governess. And this made Seguin explode once more. All his rancor
against his wife revived. The house was going to rack and ruin. She
spent her days lying on a sofa. Since when had the governess taken leave
to go out with the children without saying anything? One could not
even see the children now in order to kiss them. It was a nice state of
things. They were left to the servants; in fact, it was the servants now
who controlled the house.

Thereupon Valentine began to cry.

"_Mon Dieu_!" said Marianne to her husband, when she found herself out
of doors, able to breathe, and happy once more now that she was leaning
on his arm; "why, they are quite mad, the people in that house."

"Yes," Mathieu responded, "they are mad, no doubt; but we must pity
them, for they know not what happiness is."

VI

ABOUT nine o'clock one fine cold morning, a few days afterwards, as
Mathieu, bound for his office, a little late through having lingered
near his wife, was striding hastily across the garden which separated
the pavilion from the factory yard, he met Constance and Maurice, who,
clad in furs, were going out for a walk in the sharp air. Beauchene, who
was accompanying them as far as the gate, bareheaded and ever sturdy and
victorious, gayly exclaimed to his wife:

"Give the youngster a good spin on his legs! Let him take in all the
fresh air he can. There's nothing like that and good food to make a
man."

Mathieu, on hearing this, stopped short. "Has Maurice been poorly
again?" he inquired.

"Oh, no!" hastily replied the boy's mother, with an appearance of great
gayety, assumed perhaps from an unconscious desire to hide certain
covert fears. "Only the doctor wants him to take exercise, and it is so
fine this morning that we are going off on quite an expedition."

"Don't go along the quays," said Beauchene again. "Go up towards the
Invalides. He'll have much stiffer marching to do when he's a soldier."

Then, the mother and the child having taken themselves off, he went
back into the works with Mathieu, adding in his triumphant way: "That
youngster, you know, is as strong as an oak. But women are always so
nervous. For my part, I'm quite easy in mind about him, as you can see."
And with a laugh he concluded: "When one has but one son, he keeps him.