reduce the chamber where Durtal was. The latter had to return to the
subjugated workroom, and the cat, shocked by the racket, arched its back
and, rubbing against its master's legs, followed him to a place of
safety.

In the thick of the conflict Des Hermies rang the door bell.

"I'll put on my shoes," cried Durtal, "and we'll get out of this.
Look--" he passed his hand over the table and brought back a coat of
grime that made him appear to be wearing a grey glove--"look. That brute
turns the house upside down and knocks everything to pieces, and here's
the result. He leaves more dust when he goes than he found when he came
in!"

"Bah," said Des Hermies, "dust isn't a bad thing. Besides having the
taste of ancient biscuit and the smell of an old book, it is the
floating velvet which softens hard surfaces, the fine dry wash which
takes the garishness out of crude colour schemes. It is the caparison of
abandon, the veil of oblivion. Who, then, can despise it--aside from
certain persons whose lamentable lot must often have wrung a tear from
you?

"Imagine living in one of these Paris _passages_. Think of a consumptive
spitting blood and suffocating in a room one flight up, behind the
'ass-back' gables of, say the passage des Panoramas, for instance. When
the window is open the dust comes in impregnated with snuff and
saturated with clammy exudations. The invalid, choking, begs for air,
and in order that he may breathe the window is _closed_.

"Well, the dust that you complain of is rather milder than that. Anyway