gallery connected the black factory buildings with the luxurious private
house on the quay. And they found Constance in a little drawing-room
hung with yellow satin, a room to which she was very partial. She was
seated near a sofa, on which lay little Maurice, her fondly prized and
only child, who had just completed his seventh year.

"Is he ill?" inquired Mathieu.

The child seemed sturdily built, and he greatly resembled his father,
though he had a more massive jaw. But he was pale and there was a faint
ring round his heavy eyelids. His mother, that "bag of bones," a little
dark woman, yellow and withered at six-and-twenty, looked at him with an
expression of egotistical pride.

"Oh, no! he's never ill," she answered. "Only he has been complaining of
his legs. And so I made him lie down, and I wrote last night to ask Dr.
Boutan to call this morning."

"Pooh!" exclaimed Beauchene with a hearty laugh, "women are all the
same! A child who is as strong as a Turk! I should just like anybody to
tell me that he isn't strong."

Precisely at that moment in walked Dr. Boutan, a short, stout man of
forty, with very keen eyes set in a clean-shaven, heavy, but extremely
good-natured face. He at once examined the child, felt and sounded him;
then with his kindly yet serious air he said: "No, no, there's nothing.
It is the mere effect of growth. The lad has become rather pale through
spending the winter in Paris, but a few months in the open air, in the
country, will set him right again."

"I told you so!" cried Beauchene.

Constance had kept her son's little hand in her own. He had again
stretched himself out and closed his eyes in a weary way, whilst she,
in her happiness, continued smiling. Whenever she chose she could appear
quite pleasant-looking, however unprepossessing might be her features.
The doctor had seated himself, for he was fond of lingering and chatting
in the houses of friends. A general practitioner, and one who more
particularly tended the ailments of women and children, he was naturally
a confessor, knew all sorts of secrets, and was quite at home in family
circles. It was he who had attended Constance at the birth of that
much-spoiled only son, and Marianne at the advent of the four children
she already had.

Mathieu had remained standing, awaiting an opportunity to deliver his
invitation. "Well," said he, "if you are soon leaving for the country,
you must come one Sunday to Janville. My wife would be