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The Fat and the Thin by Émile Zola
page 177 of 440 (40%)
silence, Logre's fiery outbursts, and Charvet's cool venom. When he went
home, he did not at once retire to bed. He had grown very fond of his
attic, that girlish bedroom, where Augustine had left scraps of ribbons,
souvenirs, and other feminine trifles lying about. There still remained
some hair-pins on the mantelpiece, with gilt cardboard boxes of buttons
and lozenges, cutout pictures, and empty pomade pots that retained an
odour of jasmine. Then there were some reels of thread, needles, and
a missal lying by the side of a soiled Dream-book in the drawer of
the rickety deal table. A white summer dress with yellow spots
hung forgotten from a nail; while upon the board which served as a
toilet-table a big stain behind the water-jug showed where a bottle of
bandoline had been overturned. The little chamber, with its narrow iron
bed, its two rush-bottomed chairs, and its faded grey wallpaper,
was instinct with innocent simplicity. The plain white curtains, the
childishness suggested by the cardboard boxes and the Dream-book, and
the clumsy coquetry which had stained the walls, all charmed Florent and
brought him back to dreams of youth. He would have preferred not to
have known that plain, wiry-haired Augustine, but to have been able to
imagine that he was occupying the room of a sister, some bright sweet
girl of whose budding womanhood every trifle around him spoke.

Yet another pleasure which he took was to lean out of the garret window
at nighttime. In front of it was a narrow ledge of roof, enclosed by
an iron railing, and forming a sort of balcony, on which Augustine had
grown a pomegranate in a box. Since the nights had turned cold, Florent
had brought the pomegranate indoors and kept it by the foot of his bed
till morning. He would linger for a few minutes by the open window,
inhaling deep draughts of the sharp fresh air which was wafted up from
the Seine, over the housetops of the Rue de Rivoli. Below him the roofs
of the markets spread confusedly in a grey expanse, like slumbering
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