with worm-eaten slatted shutters.

They alighted from the cab. The trees of the boulevard, in four straight
lines, lifted their frail skeletons in the fog. They heard, through the
wide silence, the diminishing rattle of their cab, on its way back to
the barrier, and the trotting of a horse coming from Paris.

"How dismal the country is!" she said, with a shiver.

"But, my darling, the Boulevard de Villiers is not the country."

He could not open the gate, and the lock creaked. Irritated by the
sound, she said:

"Open it, do: the noise is getting on my nerves."

She noticed that the cab which had come from Paris had stopped near
their house, at about the tenth tree from where she stood; she looked at
the thin, steaming horse and the shabby driver, and asked:

"What is that carriage?"

"It's a cab, my pet."

"Why does it stop here?"

"It has not stopped here? It's stopping in front of the next house."

"There is no next house; there's only a vacant lot."