George Duroy had returned to all his old habits.

Installed at present in the little ground-floor suite of rooms in the Rue de Constantinople, he lived soberly, like a man preparing a new existence for himself.

Madame Forestier had not yet returned. She was lingering at Cannes. He received a letter from her merely announcing her return about the middle of April, without a word of allusion to their farewell. He was waiting, his mind was thoroughly made up now to employ every means in order to marry her, if she seemed to hesitate. But he had faith in his luck, confidence in that power of seduction which he felt within him, a vague and irresistible power which all women felt the influence of.

A short note informed him that the decisive hour was about to strike: "I am in Paris. Come and see me.—Madeleine Forestier."

Nothing more. He received it by the nine o'clock post. He arrived at her residence at three on the same day. She held out both hands to him smiling with her pleasant smile, and they looked into one another's eyes for a few seconds. Then she said: "How good you were to come to me there under those terrible circumstances."

"I should have done anything you told me to," he replied.

And they sat down. She asked the news, inquired about the Walters, about all the staff, about the paper. She had often thought about the paper.

"I miss that a great deal," she said, "really a very great deal. I had become at heart a journalist. What would you, I love the profession?"

Then she paused. He thought he understood, he thought he divined in her smile, in the tone of her voice, in her words themselves a kind of invitation, and although he had promised to himself not to precipitate matters, he stammered out: "Well, then—why—why should you not resume—this occupation—under—under the name of Duroy?"

She suddenly became serious again, and placing her hand on his arm, murmured: "Do not let us speak of that yet a while."

But he divined that she accepted, and falling at her knees began to passionately kiss her hands, repeating: "Thanks, thanks; oh, how I love you!"

She rose. He did so, too, and noted that she was very pale. Then he understood that he had pleased her, for a long time past, perhaps, and as they found themselves face to face, he clasped her to him and printed a long, tender, and decorous kiss on her forehead. When she had freed herself, slipping through his arms, she said in a serious tone: "Listen, I have not yet made up my mind to anything. However, it may be—yes. But you must promise me the most absolute secrecy till I give you leave to speak."

He swore this, and left, his heart overflowing with joy.

He was from that time forward very discreet as regards the visits he paid her, and did not ask for any more definite consent on her part, for she had a way of speaking of the future, of saying "by-and-by," and of shaping plans in which these two lives were blended, which answered him better and more delicately than a formal acceptation.

Duroy worked hard and spent little, trying to save money so as not to be without a penny at the date fixed for his marriage, and becoming as close as he had been prodigal. The summer went by, and then the autumn, without anyone suspecting anything, for they met very little, and only in the most natural way in the world.

One evening, Madeleine, looking him straight in the eyes said: "You have not yet announced our intentions to Madame de Marelle?"

"No, dear, having promised you to be secret, I have not opened my mouth to a living soul."

"Well, it is about time to tell her. I will undertake to inform the Walters. You will do so this week, will you not?"

He blushed as he said: "Yes, to-morrow."

She had turned away her eyes in order not to notice his confusion, and said: "If you like we will be married in the beginning of May. That will be a very good time."

"I obey you in all things with joy."

"The tenth of May, which is a Saturday, will suit me very nicely, for it is my birthday."

"Very well, the tenth of May."

"Your parents live near Rouen, do they not? You have told me so, at least."

"Yes, near Rouen, at Canteleu."

"What are they?"

"They are—they are small annuitants."

"Ah! I should very much like to know them."

He hesitated, greatly perplexed, and said: "But, you see, they are—" Then making up his mind, like a really clever man, he went on: "My dear, they are mere country folk, innkeepers, who have pinched themselves to the utmost to enable me to pursue my studies. For my part, I am not ashamed of them, but their—simplicity—their rustic manners—might, perhaps, render you uncomfortable."

She smiled, delightfully, her face lit up with gentle kindness as she replied: "No. I shall be very fond of them. We will go and see them. I want to. I will speak of this to you again. I, too, am a daughter of poor people, but I have lost my parents. I have no longer anyone in the world." She held out her hand to him as she added: "But you."

He felt softened, moved, overcome, as he had been by no other woman.

"I had thought about one matter," she continued, "but it is rather difficult to explain."

"What is it?" he asked.

"Well, it is this, my dear boy, I am like all women, I have my weaknesses, my pettinesses. I love all that glitters, that catches the ear. I should have so delighted to have borne a noble name. Could you not, on the occasion of your marriage, ennoble yourself a little?"

She had blushed in her turn, as if she had proposed something indelicate.

He replied simply enough: "I have often thought about it, but it did not seem to me so easy."

"Why so?"

He began to laugh, saying: "Because I was afraid of making myself look ridiculous."

She shrugged her shoulders. "Not at all, not at all Every one does it, and nobody laughs. Separate your name in two—Du Roy. That looks very well."

He replied at once like a man who understands the matter in question: "No, that will not do at all. It is too simple, too common, too well-known. I had thought of taking the name of my native place, as a literary pseudonym at first, then of adding it to my own by degrees, and then, later on, of even cutting my name in two, as you suggest."

"Your native place is Canteleu?" she queried.

"Yes."

She hesitated, saying: "No, I do not like the termination. Come, cannot we modify this word Canteleu a little?"

She had taken up a pen from the table, and was scribbling names and studying their physiognomy. All at once she exclaimed: "There, there it is!" and held out to him a paper, on which read—"Madame Duroy de Cantel."

He reflected a few moments, and then said gravely: "Yes, that does very well."

She was delighted, and kept repeating "Duroy de Cantel, Duroy de Cantel, Madame Duroy de Cantel. It is capital, capital." She went on with an air of conviction: "And you will see how easy it is to get everyone to accept it. But one must know how to seize the opportunity, for it will be too late afterwards. You must from to-morrow sign your descriptive articles D. de Cantel, and your 'Echoes' simply Duroy. It is done every day in the press, and no one will be astonished to see you take a pseudonym. At the moment of our marriage we can modify it yet a little more, and tell our friends that you had given up the 'Du' out of modesty on account of your position, or even say nothing about it. What is your father's Christian name?"

"Alexander."

She murmured: "Alexander, Alexander," two or three times, listening to the sonorous roll of the syllables, and then wrote on a blank sheet of paper:

"Monsieur and Madame Alexander Du Roy de Cantel have the honor to inform you of the marriage of Monsieur George Du Roy de Cantel, their son, to Madame Madeleine Forestier." She looked at her writing, holding it at a distance, charmed by the effect, and said: "With a little method we can manage whatever we wish."

When he found himself once more in the street, firmly resolved to call himself in future Du Roy, and even Du Roy de Cantel, it seemed to him that he had acquired fresh importance. He walked with more swagger, his head higher, his moustache fiercer, as a gentleman should walk. He felt in himself a species of joyous desire to say to the passers-by: "My name is Du Roy de Cantel."

But scarcely had he got home than the thought of Madame de Marelle made him feel uneasy, and he wrote to her at once to ask her to make an appointment for the next day.

"It will be a tough job," he thought. "I must look out for squalls."

Then he made up his mind for it, with the native carelessness which caused him to slur over the disagreeable side of life, and began to write a fancy article on the fresh taxes needed in order to make the Budget balance. He set down in this the nobiliary "De" at a hundred francs a year, and titles, from baron to prince, at from five hundred to five thousand francs. And he signed it "D. de Cantel."

He received a telegram from his mistress next morning saying that she would call at one o'clock. He waited for her somewhat feverishly, his mind made up to bring things to a point at once, to say everything right out, and then, when the first emotion had subsided, to argue cleverly in order to prove to her that he could not remain a bachelor for ever, and that as Monsieur de Marelle insisted on living, he had been obliged to think of another than herself as his legitimate companion. He felt moved, though, and when he heard her ring his heart began to beat.

She threw herself into his arms, exclaiming: "Good morning, Pretty-boy." Then, finding his embrace cold, looked at him, and said: "What is the matter with you?"

"Sit down," he said, "we have to talk seriously."

She sat down without taking her bonnet off, only turning back her veil, and waited.

He had lowered his eyes, and was preparing the beginning of his speech. He commenced in a low tone of voice: "My dear one, you see me very uneasy, very sad, and very much embarrassed at what I have to admit to you. I love you dearly. I really love you from the bottom of my heart, so that the fear of causing you pain afflicts me more than even the news I am going to tell you."

She grew pale, felt herself tremble, and stammered out: "What is the matter? Tell me at once."

He said in sad but resolute tones, with that feigned dejection which we make use of to announce fortunate misfortunes: "I am going to be married."

She gave the sigh of a woman who is about to faint, a painful sigh from the very depths of her bosom, and then began to choke and gasp without being able to speak.

Seeing that she did not say anything, he continued: "You cannot imagine how much I suffered before coming to this resolution. But I have neither position nor money. I am alone, lost in Paris. I needed beside me someone who above all would be an adviser, a consoler, and a stay. It is a partner, an ally, that I have sought, and that I have found."

He was silent, hoping that she would reply, expecting furious rage, violence, and insults. She had placed one hand on her heart as though to restrain its throbbings, and continued to draw her breath by painful efforts, which made her bosom heave spasmodically and her head nod to and fro. He took her other hand, which was resting on the arm of the chair, but she snatched it away abruptly. Then she murmured, as though in a state of stupefaction: "Oh, my God!"

He knelt down before her, without daring to touch her, however, and more deeply moved by this silence than he would have been by a fit of anger, stammered out: "Clo! my darling Clo! just consider my situation, consider what I am. Oh! if I had been able to marry you, what happiness it would have been. But you are married. What could I do? Come, think of it, now. I must take a place in society, and I cannot do it so long as I have not a home. If you only knew. There are days when I have felt a longing to kill your husband."

He spoke in his soft, subdued, seductive voice, a voice which entered the ear like music. He saw two tears slowly gather in the fixed and staring eyes of his mistress and then roll down her cheeks, while two more were already formed on the eyelids.

He murmured: "Do not cry, Clo; do not cry, I beg of you. You rend my very heart."

Then she made an effort, a strong effort, to be proud and dignified, and asked, in the quivering tone of a woman about to burst into sobs: "Who is it?"

He hesitated a moment, and then understanding that he must, said:

"Madeleine Forestier."

Madame de Marelle shuddered all over, and remained silent, so deep in thought that she seemed to have forgotten that he was at her feet. And two transparent drops kept continually forming in her eyes, falling and forming again.

She rose. Duroy guessed that she was going away without saying a word, without reproach or forgiveness, and he felt hurt and humiliated to the bottom of his soul. Wishing to stay her, he threw his arms about the skirt of her dress, clasping through the stuff her rounded legs, which he felt stiffen in resistance. He implored her, saying: "I beg of you, do not go away like that."

Then she looked down on him from above with that moistened and despairing eye, at once so charming and so sad, which shows all the grief of a woman's heart, and gasped out: "I—I have nothing to say. I have nothing to do with it. You—you are right. You—you have chosen well."

And, freeing herself by a backward movement, she left the room without his trying to detain her further.

Left to himself, he rose as bewildered as if he had received a blow on the head. Then, making up his mind, he muttered: "Well, so much the worse or the better. It is over, and without a scene; I prefer that," and relieved from an immense weight, suddenly feeling himself free, delivered, at ease as to his future life, he began to spar at the wall, hitting out with his fists in a kind of intoxication of strength and triumph, as if he had been fighting Fate.

When Madame Forestier asked: "Have you told Madame de Marelle?" he quietly answered, "Yes."

She scanned him closely with her bright eyes, saying: "And did it not cause her any emotion?"

"No, not at all. She thought it, on the contrary, a very good idea."

The news was soon known. Some were astonished, others asserted that they had foreseen it; others, again, smiled, and let it be understood that they were not surprised.

The young man who now signed his descriptive articles D. de Cantel, his "Echoes" Duroy, and the political articles which he was beginning to write from time to time Du Roy, passed half his time with his betrothed, who treated him with a fraternal familiarity into which, however, entered a real but hidden love, a species of desire concealed as a weakness. She had decided that the marriage should be quite private, only the witnesses being present, and that they should leave the same evening for Rouen. They would go the next day to see the journalist's parents, and remain with them some days. Duroy had striven to get her to renounce this project, but not having been able to do so, had ended by giving in to it.

So the tenth of May having come, the newly-married couple, having considered the religious ceremony useless since they had not invited anyone, returned to finish packing their boxes after a brief visit to the Town Hall. They took, at the Saint Lazare terminus, the six o'clock train, which bore them away towards Normandy. They had scarcely exchanged twenty words up to the time that they found themselves alone in the railway carriage. As soon as they felt themselves under way, they looked at one another and began to laugh, to hide a certain feeling of awkwardness which they did not want to manifest.

The train slowly passed through the long station of Batignolles, and then crossed the mangy-looking plain extending from the fortifications to the Seine. Duroy and his wife from time to time made a few idle remarks, and then turned again towards the windows. When they crossed the bridge of AsniÉres, a feeling of greater liveliness was aroused in them at the sight of the river covered with boats, fishermen, and oarsmen. The sun, a bright May sun, shed its slanting rays upon the craft and upon the smooth stream, which seemed motionless, without current or eddy, checked, as it were, beneath the heat and brightness of the declining day. A sailing boat in the middle of the river having spread two large triangular sails of snowy canvas, wing and wing, to catch the faintest puffs of wind, looked like an immense bird preparing to take flight.

Duroy murmured: "I adore the neighborhood of Paris. I have memories of dinners which I reckon among the pleasantest in my life."

"And the boats," she replied. "How nice it is to glide along at sunset."

Then they became silent, as though afraid to continue their outpourings as to their past life, and remained so, already enjoying, perhaps, the poesy of regret.

Duroy, seated face to face with his wife, took her hand and slowly kissed it. "When we get back again," said he, "we will go and dine sometimes at Chatou."

She murmured: "We shall have so many things to do," in a tone of voice that seemed to imply, "The agreeable must be sacrificed to the useful."

He still held her hand, asking himself with some uneasiness by what transition he should reach the caressing stage. He would not have felt uneasy in the same way in presence of the ignorance of a young girl, but the lively and artful intelligence he felt existed in Madeleine, rendered his attitude an embarrassed one. He was afraid of appearing stupid to her, too timid or too brutal, too slow or too prompt. He kept pressing her hand gently, without her making any response to this appeal. At length he said: "It seems to me very funny for you to be my wife."

She seemed surprised as she said: "Why so?"

"I do not know. It seems strange to me. I want to kiss you, and I feel astonished at having the right to do so."

She calmly held out her cheek to him, which he kissed as he would have kissed that of a sister.

He continued: "The first time I saw you—you remember the dinner Forestier invited me to—I thought, 'Hang it all, if I could only find a wife like that.' Well, it's done. I have one."

She said, in a low tone: "That is very nice," and looked him straight in the face, shrewdly, and with smiling eyes.

He reflected, "I am too cold. I am stupid. I ought to get along quicker than this," and asked: "How did you make Forestier's acquaintance?"

She replied, with provoking archness: "Are we going to Rouen to talk about him?"

He reddened, saying: "I am a fool. But you frighten me a great deal."

She was delighted, saying: "I—impossible! How is it?"

He had seated himself close beside her. She suddenly exclaimed: "Oh! a stag."

The train was passing through the forest of Saint Germaine, and she had seen a frightened deer clear one of the paths at a bound. Duroy, leaning forward as she looked out of the open window, printed a long kiss, a lover's kiss, among the hair on her neck. She remained still for a few seconds, and then, raising her head, said: "You are tickling me. Leave off."

But he would not go away, but kept on pressing his curly moustache against her white skin in a long and thrilling caress.

She shook herself, saying: "Do leave off."

He had taken her head in his right hand, passed around her, and turned it towards him. Then he darted on her mouth like a hawk on its prey. She struggled, repulsed him, tried to free herself. She succeeded at last, and repeated: "Do leave off."

He remained seated, very red and chilled by this sensible remark; then, having recovered more self-possession, he said, with some liveliness: "Very well, I will wait, but I shan't be able to say a dozen words till we get to Rouen. And remember that we are only passing through Poissy."

"I will do the talking then," she said, and sat down quietly beside him.

She spoke with precision of what they would do on their return. They must keep on the suite of apartments that she had resided in with her first husband, and Duroy would also inherit the duties and salary of Forestier at the Vie Francaise. Before their union, besides, she had planned out, with the certainty of a man of business, all the financial details of their household. They had married under a settlement preserving to each of them their respective estates, and every incident that might arise—death, divorce, the birth of one or more children—was duly provided for. The young fellow contributed a capital of four thousand francs, he said, but of that sum he had borrowed fifteen hundred. The rest was due to savings effected during the year in view of the event. Her contribution was forty thousand francs, which she said had been left her by Forestier.

She returned to him as a subject of conversation. "He was a very steady, economical, hard-working fellow. He would have made a fortune in a very short time."

Duroy no longer listened, wholly absorbed by other thoughts. She stopped from time to time to follow out some inward train of ideas, and then went on: "In three or four years you can be easily earning thirty to forty thousand francs a year. That is what Charles would have had if he had lived."

George, who began to find the lecture rather a long one, replied: "I thought we were not going to Rouen to talk about him."

She gave him a slight tap on the cheek, saying, with a laugh: "That is so. I am in the wrong."

He made a show of sitting with his hands on his knees like a very good boy.

"You look very like a simpleton like that," said she.

He replied: "That is my part, of which, by the way, you reminded me just now, and I shall continue to play it."

"Why?" she asked.

"Because it is you who take management of the household, and even of me. That, indeed, concerns you, as being a widow."

She was amazed, saying: "What do you really mean?"

"That you have an experience that should enlighten my ignorance, and matrimonial practice that should polish up my bachelor innocence, that's all."

"That is too much," she exclaimed.

He replied: "That is so. I don't know anything about ladies; no, and you know all about gentlemen, for you are a widow. You must undertake my education—this evening—and you can begin at once if you like."

She exclaimed, very much amused: "Oh, indeed, if you reckon on me for that!"

He repeated, in the tone of a school boy stumbling through his lesson: "Yes, I do. I reckon that you will give me solid information—in twenty lessons. Ten for the elements, reading and grammar; ten for finishing accomplishments. I don't know anything myself."

She exclaimed, highly amused: "You goose."

He replied: "If that is the familiar tone you take, I will follow your example, and tell you, darling, that I adore you more and more every moment, and that I find Rouen a very long way off."

He spoke now with a theatrical intonation and with a series of changes of facial expression, which amused his companion, accustomed to the ways of literary Bohemia. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, finding him really charming, and experiencing the longing we have to pluck a fruit from the tree at once, and the check of reason which advises us to wait till dinner to eat it at the proper time. Then she observed, blushing somewhat at the thoughts which assailed her: "My dear little pupil, trust my experience, my great experience. Kisses in a railway train are not worth anything. They only upset one." Then she blushed still more as she murmured: "One should never eat one's corn in the ear."

He chuckled, kindling at the double meanings from her pretty mouth, and made the sign of the cross, with a movement of the lips, as though murmuring a prayer, adding aloud: "I have placed myself under the protection of St. Anthony, patron-saint of temptations. Now I am adamant."

Night was stealing gently on, wrapping in its transparent shadow, like a fine gauze, the broad landscape stretching away to the right. The train was running along the Seine, and the young couple began to watch the crimson reflections on the surface of the river, winding like a broad strip of polished metal alongside the line, patches fallen from the sky, which the departing sun had kindled into flame. These reflections slowly died out, grew deeper, faded sadly. The landscape became dark with that sinister thrill, that deathlike quiver, which each twilight causes to pass over the earth. This evening gloom, entering the open window, penetrated the two souls, but lately so lively, of the now silent pair.

They had drawn more closely together to watch the dying day. At Nantes the railway people had lit the little oil lamp, which shed its yellow, trembling light upon the drab cloth of the cushions. Duroy passed his arms round the waist of his wife, and clasped her to him. His recent keen desire had become a softened one, a longing for consoling little caresses, such as we lull children with.

He murmured softly: "I shall love you very dearly, my little Made."

The softness of his voice stirred the young wife, and caused a rapid thrill to run through her. She offered her mouth, bending towards him, for he was resting his cheek upon the warm pillow of her bosom, until the whistle of the train announced that they were nearing a station. She remarked, flattening the ruffled locks about her forehead with the tips of her fingers: "It was very silly. We are quite childish."

But he was kissing her hands in turn with feverish rapidity, and replied: "I adore you, my little Made."

Until they reached Rouen they remained almost motionless, cheek against cheek, their eyes turned to the window, through which, from time to time, the lights of houses could be seen in the darkness, satisfied with feeling themselves so close to one another, and with the growing anticipation of a freer and more intimate embrace.

They put up at a hotel overlooking the quay, and went to bed after a very hurried supper.

The chambermaid aroused them next morning as it was striking eight. When they had drank the cup of tea she had placed on the night-table, Duroy looked at his wife, then suddenly, with the joyful impulse of the fortunate man who has just found a treasure, he clasped her in his arms, exclaiming: "My little Made, I am sure that I love you ever so much, ever so much, ever so much."

She smiled with her confident and satisfied smile, and murmured, as she returned his kisses: "And I too—perhaps."

But he still felt uneasy about the visit of his parents. He had already forewarned his wife, had prepared and lectured her, but he thought fit to do so again.

"You know," he said, "they are only rustics—country rustics, not theatrical ones."

She laughed.

"But I know that: you have told me so often enough. Come, get up and let me get up."

He jumped out of bed, and said, as he drew on his socks:

"We shall be very uncomfortable there, very uncomfortable. There is only an old straw palliasse in my room. Spring mattresses are unknown at Canteleu."

She seemed delighted.

"So much the better. It will be delightful to sleep badly—beside—beside you, and to be woke up by the crowing of the cocks."

She had put on her dressing-gown—a white flannel dressing-gown—which Duroy at once recognized. The sight of it was unpleasant to him. Why? His wife had, he was aware, a round dozen of these morning garments. She could not destroy her trousseau in order to buy a new one. No matter, he would have preferred that her bed-linen, her night-linen, her under-clothing were not the same she had made use of with the other. It seemed to him that the soft, warm stuff must have retained something from its contact with Forestier.

He walked to the window, lighting a cigarette. The sight of the port, the broad stream covered with vessels with tapering spars, the steamers noisily unloading alongside the quay, stirred him, although he had been acquainted with it all for a long time past, and he exclaimed: "By Jove! it is a fine sight."

Madeleine approached, and placing both hands on one of her husband's shoulders, leaned against him with careless grace, charmed and delighted. She kept repeating: "Oh! how pretty, how pretty. I did not know that there were so many ships as that."

They started an hour later, for they were to lunch with the old people, who had been forewarned some days beforehand. A rusty open carriage bore them along with a noise of jolting ironmongery. They followed a long and rather ugly boulevard, passed between some fields through which flowed a stream, and began to ascend the slope. Madeleine, somewhat fatigued, had dozed off beneath the penetrating caress of the sun, which warmed her delightfully as she lay stretched back in the old carriage as though in a bath of light and country air.

Her husband awoke her, saying: "Look!"

They had halted two-thirds of the way up the slope, at a spot famous for the view, and to which all tourists drive. They overlooked the long and broad valley through which the bright river flowed in sweeping curves. It could be caught sight of in the distance, dotted with numerous islands, and describing a wide sweep before flowing through Rouen. Then the town appeared on the right bank, slightly veiled in the morning mist, but with rays of sunlight falling on its roofs; its thousand squat or pointed spires, light, fragile-looking, wrought like gigantic jewels; its round or square towers topped with heraldic crowns; its belfries; the numerous Gothic summits of its churches, overtopped by the sharp spire of the cathedral, that surprising spike of bronze—strange, ugly, and out of all proportion, the tallest in the world. Facing it, on the other side of the river, rose the factory chimneys of the suburb of Saint Serves—tall, round, and broadening at their summit. More numerous than their sister spires, they reared even in the distant country, their tall brick columns, and vomited into the blue sky their black and coaly breath. Highest of all, as high as the second of the summits reared by human labor, the pyramid of Cheops, almost level with its proud companion the cathedral spire, the great steam-pump of La Foudre seemed the queen of the busy, smoking factories, as the other was the queen of the sacred edifices. Further on, beyond the workmen's town, stretched a forest of pines, and the Seine, having passed between the two divisions of the city, continued its way, skirting a tall rolling slope, wooded at the summit, and showing here and there its bare bone of white stone. Then the river disappeared on the horizon, after again describing a long sweeping curve. Ships could be seen ascending and descending the stream, towed by tugs as big as flies and belching forth thick smoke. Islands were stretched along the water in a line, one close to the other, or with wide intervals between them, like the unequal beads of a verdant rosary.

The driver waited until the travelers' ecstasies were over. He knew from experience the duration of the admiration of all the breed of tourists. But when he started again Duroy suddenly caught sight of two old people advancing towards them some hundreds of yards further on, and jumped out, exclaiming: "There they are. I recognize them."

There were two country-folk, a man and a woman, walking with irregular steps, rolling in their gait, and sometimes knocking their shoulders together. The man was short and strongly built, high colored and inclined to stoutness, but powerful, despite his years. The woman was tall, spare, bent, careworn, the real hard-working country-woman who has toiled afield from childhood, and has never had time to amuse herself, while her husband has been joking and drinking with the customers. Madeleine had also alighted from the carriage, and she watched these two poor creatures coming towards them with a pain at her heart, a sadness she had not anticipated. They had not recognized their son in this fine gentleman and would never have guessed this handsome lady in the light dress to be their daughter-in-law. They were walking on quickly and in silence to meet their long-looked-for boy, without noticing these city folk followed by their carriage.

They passed by when George, who was laughing, cried out: "Good-day, Daddy Duroy!"

They both stopped short, amazed at first, then stupefied with surprise. The old woman recovered herself first, and stammered, without advancing a step: "Is't thou, boy?"

The young fellow answered: "Yes, it is I, mother," and stepping up to her, kissed her on both cheeks with a son's hearty smack. Then he rubbed noses with his father, who had taken off his cap, a very tall, black silk cap, made Rouen fashion, like those worn by cattle dealers.

Then George said: "This is my wife," and the two country people looked at Madeleine. They looked at her as one looks at a phenomenon, with an uneasy fear, united in the father with a species of approving satisfaction, in the mother with a kind of jealous enmity.

The man, who was of a joyous nature and inspired by a loveliness born of sweet cider and alcohol, grew bolder, and asked, with a twinkle in the corner of his eyes: "I may kiss her all the same?"

"Certainly," replied his son, and Madeleine, ill at ease, held out both cheeks to the sounding smacks of the rustic, who then wiped his lips with the back of his hand. The old woman, in her turn, kissed her daughter-in-law with a hostile reserve. No, this was not the daughter-in-law of her dreams; the plump, fresh housewife, rosy-cheeked as an apple, and round as a brood mare. She looked like a hussy, the fine lady with her furbelows and her musk. For the old girl all perfumes were musk.

They set out again, walking behind the carriage which bore the trunk of the newly-wedded pair. The old fellow took his son by the arm, and keeping him a little in the rear of the others, asked with interest: "Well, how goes business, lad?"

"Pretty fair."

"So much the better. Has thy wife any money?"

"Forty thousand francs," answered George.

His father gave vent to an admiring whistle, and could only murmur, "Dang it!" so overcome was he by the mention of the sum. Then he added, in a tone of serious conviction: "Dang it all, she's a fine woman!" For he found her to his taste, and he had passed for a good judge in his day.

Madeleine and her mother-in-law were walking side by side without exchanging a word. The two men rejoined them. They reached the village, a little roadside village formed of half-a-score houses on each side of the highway, cottages and farm buildings, the former of brick and the latter of clay, these covered with thatch and those with slates. Father Duroy's tavern, "The Bellevue," a bit of a house consisting of a ground floor and a garret, stood at the beginning of the village to the left. A pine branch above the door indicated, in ancient fashion, that thirsty folk could enter.

The things were laid for lunch, in the common room of the tavern, on two tables placed together and covered with two napkins. A neighbor, come in to help to serve the lunch, bowed low on seeing such a fine lady appear; and then, recognizing George, exclaimed: "Good Lord! is that the youngster?"

He replied gayly: "Yes, it is I, Mother Brulin," and kissed her as he had kissed his father and mother. Then turning to his wife, he said: "Come into our room and take your hat off."

He ushered her through a door to the right into a cold-looking room with tiled floor, white-washed walls, and a bed with white cotton curtains. A crucifix above a holy-water stoup, and two colored pictures, one representing Paul and Virginia under a blue palm tree, and the other Napoleon the First on a yellow horse, were the only ornaments of this clean and dispiriting apartment.

As soon as they were alone he kissed Madeleine, saying: "Thanks, Made. I am glad to see the old folks again. When one is in Paris one does not think about it; but when one meets again, it gives one pleasure all the same."

But his father, thumbing the partition with his fist, cried out: "Come along, come along, the soup is ready," and they had to sit down to table.

It was a long, countrified repast, with a succession of ill-assorted dishes, a sausage after a leg of mutton, and an omelette after a sausage. Father Duroy, excited by cider and some glasses of wine, turned on the tap of his choicest jokes—those he reserved for great occasions of festivity, smutty adventures that had happened, as he maintained, to friends of his. George, who knew all these stories, laughed, nevertheless, intoxicated by his native air, seized on by the innate love of one's birthplace and of spots familiar from childhood, by all the sensations and recollections once more renewed, by all the objects of yore seen again once more; by trifles, such as the mark of a knife on a door, a broken chair recalling some pretty event, the smell of the soil, the breath of the neighboring forest, the odors of the dwelling, the gutter, the dunghill.

Mother Duroy did not speak, but remained sad and grim, watching her daughter-in-law out of the corner of her eye, with hatred awakened in her heart—the hatred of an old toiler, an old rustic with fingers worn and limbs bent by hard work—for the city madame, who inspired her with the repulsion of an accursed creature, an impure being, created for idleness and sin. She kept getting up every moment to fetch the dishes or fill the glasses with cider, sharp and yellow from the decanter, or sweet, red, and frothing from the bottles, the corks of which popped like those of ginger beer.

Madeleine scarcely ate or spoke. She wore her wonted smile upon her lips, but it was a sad and resigned one. She was downcast. Why? She had wanted to come. She had not been unaware that she was going among country folk—poor country folk. What had she fancied them to be—she, who did not usually dream? Did she know herself? Do not women always hope for something that is not? Had she fancied them more poetical? No; but perhaps better informed, more noble, more affectionate, more ornamental. Yet she did not want them high-bred, like those in novels. Whence came it, then, that they shocked her by a thousand trifling, imperceptible details, by a thousand indefinable coarsenesses, by their very nature as rustics, by their words, their gestures, and their mirth? She recalled her own mother, of whom she never spoke to anyone—a governess, brought up at Saint Denis—seduced, and died from poverty and grief when she, Madeleine, was twelve years old. An unknown hand had had her brought up. Her father, no doubt. Who was he? She did not exactly know, although she had vague suspicions.

The lunch still dragged on. Customers were now coming in and shaking hands with the father, uttering exclamations of wonderment on seeing his son, and slyly winking as they scanned the young wife out of the corner of their eye, which was as much as to say: "Hang it all, she's not a duffer, George Duroy's wife." Others, less intimate, sat down at the wooden tables, calling for "A pot," "A jugful," "Two brandies," "A raspail," and began to play at dominoes, noisily rattling the little bits of black and white bone. Mother Duroy kept passing to and fro, serving the customers, with her melancholy air, taking money, and wiping the tables with the corner of her blue apron.

The smoke of clay pipes and sou cigars filled the room. Madeleine began to cough, and said: "Suppose we go out; I cannot stand it."

They had not quite finished, and old Duroy was annoyed at this. Then she got up and went and sat on a chair outside the door, while her father-in-law and her husband were finishing their coffee and their nip of brandy.

George soon rejoined her. "Shall we stroll down as far as the Seine?" said he.

She consented with pleasure, saying: "Oh, yes; let us go."

They descended the slope, hired a boat at Croisset, and passed the rest of the afternoon drowsily moored under the willows alongside an island, soothed to slumber by the soft spring weather, and rocked by the wavelets of the river. Then they went back at nightfall.

The evening's repast, eaten by the light of a tallow candle, was still more painful for Madeleine than that of the morning. Father Duroy, who was half drunk, no longer spoke. The mother maintained her dogged manner. The wretched light cast upon the gray walls the shadows of heads with enormous noses and exaggerated movements. A great hand was seen to raise a pitchfork to a mouth opening like a dragon's maw whenever any one of them, turning a little, presented a profile to the yellow, flickering flame.

As soon as dinner was over, Madeleine drew her husband out of the house, in order not to stay in this gloomy room, always reeking with an acrid smell of old pipes and spilt liquor. As soon as they were outside, he said: "You are tired of it already."

She began to protest, but he stopped her, saying: "No, I saw it very plainly. If you like, we will leave to-morrow."

"Very well," she murmured.

They strolled gently onward. It was a mild night, the deep, all-embracing shadow of which seemed filled with faint murmurings, rustlings, and breathings. They had entered a narrow path, overshadowed by tall trees, and running between two belts of underwood of impenetrable blackness.

"Where are we?" asked she.

"In the forest," he replied.

"Is it a large one?"

"Very large; one of the largest in France."

An odor of earth, trees, and moss—that fresh yet old scent of the woods, made up of the sap of bursting buds and the dead and moldering foliage of the thickets, seemed to linger in the path. Raising her head, Madeleine could see the stars through the tree-tops; and although no breeze stirred the boughs, she could yet feel around her the vague quivering of this ocean of leaves. A strange thrill shot through her soul and fleeted across her skin—a strange pain gripped her at the heart. Why, she did not understand. But it seemed to her that she was lost, engulfed, surrounded by perils, abandoned by everyone; alone, alone in the world beneath this living vault quivering there above her.

She murmured: "I am rather frightened. I should like to go back."

"Well, let us do so."

"And—we will leave for Paris to-morrow?"

"Yes, to-morrow."

"To-morrow morning?"

"To-morrow morning, if you like."

They returned home. The old folks had gone to bed. She slept badly, continually aroused by all the country sounds so new to her—the cry of the screech owl, the grunting of a pig in a sty adjoining the house, and the noise of a cock who kept on crowing from midnight. She was up and ready to start at daybreak.

When George announced to his parents that he was going back they were both astonished; then they understood the origin of his wish.

The father merely said: "Shall I see you again soon?"

"Yes, in the course of the summer."

"So much the better."

The old woman growled: "I hope you won't regret what you have done."

He left them two hundred francs as a present to assuage their discontent, and the carriage, which a boy had been sent in quest of, having made its appearance at about ten o'clock, the newly-married couple embraced the old country folk and started off once more.

As they were descending the hill Duroy began to laugh.

"There," he said, "I had warned you. I ought not to have introduced you to Monsieur and Madame du Roy de Cantel, Senior."

She began to laugh, too, and replied: "I am delighted now. They are good folk, whom I am beginning to like very well. I will send them some presents from Paris." Then she murmured: "Du Roy de Cantel, you will see that no one will be astonished at the terms of the notification of our marriage. We will say that we have been staying for a week with your parents on their estate." And bending towards him she kissed the tip of his moustache, saying: "Good morning, George."

He replied: "Good morning, Made," as he passed an arm around her waist.

In the valley below they could see the broad river like a ribbon of silver unrolled beneath the morning sun, the factory chimneys belching forth their clouds of smoke into the sky, and the pointed spires rising above the old town.

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