Joseph Bonéas says "my dear friend" to me, and that affects me deeply.
Monsieur Pocard says, "If I had been advised in time I would have said
a few words. It is regrettable----"

Others follow; then nothing more is to be seen in the rain, the wind
and the gloom but backs.

"It's finished. Let's go."

Marie lifts to me her sorrow-laved face. She is sweet; she is
affectionate; she is unhappy; but she does not love me.

We go away in disorder, along by the trees whose skeletons the winter
has blackened.

When we arrive in our quarter, twilight has invaded the streets. We
hear gusts of talk about the Pocard scheme. Ah, how fiercely people
live and seek success!

Little Antoinette, cautiously feeling her way by a big wall, hears us
pass. She stops and would look if she could. We espy her figure in
that twilight of which she is beginning to make a part, though fine and
faint as a pistil.

"Poor little angel!" says a woman, as she goes by.

Marie and her father are the only ones left near me when we pass
Rampaille's tavern. Some men who were at the funeral are sitting at
tables there, black-clad.