led the way, followed by the three men. As they went up the Rue de Paris
they stopped now and then in front of a milliner's or a jeweller's shop,
to look at a bonnet or an ornament; then after making their comments
they went on again. In front of the Place de la Bourse Roland paused, as
he did every day, to gaze at the docks full of vessels--the _Bassin du
Commerce_, with other docks beyond, where the huge hulls lay side by
side, closely packed in rows, four or five deep. And masts innumerable;
along several kilometres of quays the endless masts, with their yards,
poles, and rigging, gave this great gap in the heart of the town
the look of a dead forest. Above this leafless forest the gulls were
wheeling, and watching to pounce, like a falling stone, on any scraps
flung overboard; a sailor boy, fixing a pulley to a cross-beam, looked
as if he had gone up there bird's-nesting.

"Will you dine with us without any sort of ceremony, just that we may
end the day together?" said Mme. Roland to her friend.

"To be sure I will, with pleasure; I accept equally without ceremony. It
would be dismal to go home and be alone this evening."

Pierre, who had heard, and who was beginning to be restless under the
young woman's indifference, muttered to himself: "Well, the widow is
taking root now, it would seem." For some days past he had spoken of her
as "the widow." The word, harmless in itself, irritated Jean merely by
the tone given to it, which to him seemed spiteful and offensive.

The three men spoke not another word till they reached the threshold of
their own house. It was a narrow one, consisting of a ground-floor and
two floors above, in the Rue Belle-Normande. The maid, Josephine, a girl
of nineteen, a rustic servant-of-all-work at low wages, gifted to excess