could not help thinking of the scenes which he had witnessed at the
Beauchene works that day. He thought of old Moineaud, the fitter, whom he
again saw standing silent and unmoved in the women's workroom while his
daughter Euphrasie was being soundly rated by Beauchene, and while
Norine, the other girl, looked on with a sly laugh. When the toiler's
children have grown up and gone to join, the lads the army of slaughter,
and the girls the army of vice, the father, degraded by the ills of life,
pays little heed to it all. To him it is seemingly a matter of
indifference to what disaster the wind may carry the fledgelings who fall
from the nest.

It was now half-past nine o'clock, and Mathieu had more than an hour
before him to reach the Northern railway station. So he did not hurry,
but strolled very leisurely up the Boulevards. He had eaten and drunk far
more than usual, and Beauchene's insidious confidential talk, still
buzzing in his ears, helped on his intoxication. His hands were hot, and
now and again a sudden glow passed over his face. And what a warm evening
it was, too, on those Boulevards, blazing with electric lights, fevered
by a swarming, jostling throng, amid a ceaseless rumble of cabs and
omnibuses! It was all like a stream of ardent life flowing away into the
night, and Mathieu allowed himself to be carried on by the torrent, whose
hot breath, whose glow of passion, he ever felt sweeping over him.

Then, in a reverie, he pictured the day he had just spent. First he was
at the Beauchenes' in the morning, and saw the father and mother
standing, like accomplices who fully shared one another's views, beside
the sofa on which Maurice, their only son, lay dozing with a pale and
waxen face. The works must never be exposed to the danger of being
subdivided. Maurice alone must inherit all the millions which the
business might yield, so that he might become one of the princes of