"Bon Dieu! You'll see that we shan't find anything," growls Barque.
"Damn those chaps that got on the midden before us!"

The human flood reaches high-water mark everywhere. The three
streets are all growing dark as each overflows into another. Some
natives cross our path, old men or ill-shapen, contorted in their
walk, stunted in the face; and even young people, too, over whom
hovers the mystery of secret disorders or political connections. As
for the petticoats, there are old women and many young ones--fat,
with well-padded cheeks, and equal to geese in their whiteness.

Suddenly, in an alley between two houses, I have a fleeting vision
of a woman who crossed the shadowy gap--Eudoxie! Eudoxie, the fairy
woman whom Lamuse hunted like a satyr, away back in the country,
that morning we brought back Volpatte wounded, and Fouillade, the
woman I saw leaning from the spinney's edge and bound to Farfadet in
a mutual smile. It is she whom I just glimpsed like a gleam of
sunshine in that alley. But the gleam was eclipsed by the tail of a
wall, and the place thereof relapsed upon gloom. She here, already!
Then she has followed our long and painful trek! She is attracted--?

And she looks like one allured, too. Brief glimpse though it was of
her face and its crown of fair hair, plainly I saw that she was
serious, thoughtful, absentminded.

Lamuse, following close on my heels, saw nothing, and I do not tell
him. He will discover quite soon enough the bright presence of that
lovely flame where he would fain cast himself bodily, though it
evades him like a Will-o'-th'-wisp. For the moment, besides, we are
on business bent. The coveted corner must be won. We resume the hunt