excited, and promised to marry her, but she said again: "No." And left
him.

For a week he did not see her. He could not manage to meet her, and as
he did not know her address, he thought that he had lost her altogether.
On the ninth day, however, there was a ring at his bell, and when he
opened it, she was there. She threw herself into his arms, and did not
resist any longer, and for three months she was his mistress. He was
beginning to grow tired of her, when she told him she was pregnant, and
then he had one idea and wish: To break with her at any price. As,
however, he could not do that, not knowing how to begin or what to say,
full of anxiety through the fear of that child which was growing, he
took a decisive step: One night he changed his lodgings, and
disappeared.

The blow was so heavy that she did not look for the man who had
abandoned her, but threw herself at her mother's knees and confessed her
misfortune, and some months after, she gave birth to a boy.


IV

Years passed, and François Tessier grew old without there having been
any alteration in his life. He led the dull, monotonous life of
_bureaucrates_, without hopes and without expectations. Every day he got
up at the same time, went through the same streets, went through the
same door, passed the same porter, went into the same office, sat in the
same chair, and did the same work. He was alone in the world, alone,
during the day in the midst of his colleagues, and alone at night in his
bachelor's lodgings, and he laid by a hundred francs a month, against