oth hands the old work-worn tools, all
polished with use, scissors, punches, knives, folders, scrapers,
and kissed them, the tears running down his cheeks.

At that moment his aunt came in, looking for her spectacles.
Furtively, in a whisper, she asked him for a little money. In
old days she used to save the halfpence to slip them into the
"little lad's " hand; now, grown feebler than the child, she
trembled at the idea of destitution; she hoarded, and asked charity
of the priests. The fact is, her wits were weakening. Very often
she would inform her brother that she did not mean to let the
week pass without going to see the Brideaus. Now the Brideaus,
jobbing tailors at Montrouge in their lifetime, had been dead,
both husband and wife, for the last two years. Jean gave her a
louis, which she took with a delight so ugly to see that the
poor lad took refuge out of doors.

Presently, without quite knowing how, he found himself on the
_Quai_ near the _Pont d'Iena_. It was a bright day, but the
gloomy walls of the houses and the grey look of the river banks
seemed to proclaim that life is hard and cruel. Out in the
stream a dredger, all drab with marl, was discharging one after
the other its bucket-fuls of miry gravel. By the waterside a
stout oaken crane was unloading millstones, wheeling backwards
and forwards on its axis. Under the parapet, near the bridge,
an old dame with a copper-red face sat knitting stockings as
she waited for customers to buy her apple-puffs.

Jean Servien thought of his childhood; many a time had his aunt
taken him to the same spot, many a time had they watched together
the dredger hauling aboard, bucketful by bucketful, the muddy
dregs of the river. Very often his aunt had stopped to exchange
ideas with the old stallkeeper, while he examined the counter
which was spread with a napkin, the carafe of liquorice-water
that stood on it, and the lemon that served as stopper. Nothing
was changed, neither the dredger, nor the rafts of timber, nor
the old woman, nor the four ponderous stallions at either end
of the _Pont d'Iena_.

Yes, Jean Servien could hear the trees along the _Quai_, the
waters of the river, the very stones of the parapet calling to
him:

"We know you; you are the little boy his aunt, in a peasant's
cap, used to bring here to see us in former days. But we shall
never see your aunt again, nor her print shawl, nor her umbrella
which she opened against the sun; for she is old now