e."
She was talking tranquilly. She was very pretty. He felt it, although he
made no attempt to see her. "She could not, however," he thought, "help
feeling esteem and consideration for me, if she only knew that I am
the veritable author of the dissertation on Marcos Obregon de la Ronde,
which M. Francois de Neufchateau put, as though it were his own, at the
head of his edition of Gil Blas." He went beyond the bench as far as the
extremity of the walk, which was very near, then turned on his heel and
passed once more in front of the lovely girl. This time, he was very
pale. Moreover, all his emotions were disagreeable. As he went further
from the bench and the young girl, and while his back was turned to her,
he fancied that she was gazing after him, and that made him stumble.

He did not attempt to approach the bench again; he halted near the
middle of the walk, and there, a thing which he never did, he sat down,
and reflecting in the most profoundly indistinct depths of his spirit,
that after all, it was hard that persons whose white bonnet and black
gown he admired should be absolutely insensible to his splendid trousers
and his new coat.

At the expiration of a quarter of an hour, he rose, as though he were
on the point of again beginning his march towards that bench which was
surrounded by an aureole. But he remained standing there, motionless.
For the first time in fifteen months, he said to himself that that
gentleman who sat there every day with his daughter, had, on his side,
noticed him, and probably considered his assiduity singular.

For the first time, also, he was conscious of some irreverence in
designating that stranger, even in his secret thoughts, by the sobriquet
of M. le Blanc.

He stood thus for several minutes, with drooping head, tracing figures
in the sand, with the cane which he held in his hand.

Then he turned abruptly in the direction opposite to the bench, to M.
Leblanc and his daughter, and went home.

That day he forgot to dine. At eight o'clock in the evening he perceived
this fact, and as it was too late to go down to the Rue Saint-Jacques,
he said: "Never mind!" and ate a bit of bread.

He did not go to bed until he had brushed his coat and folded it up with
great care.

CHAPTER V--DIVRS CLAPS OF THUNDER FALL ON MA'AM BOUGON

On the following day, Ma'am Bougon, as Courfeyrac styled the old
portress-principal-tenant, housekeeper of the Gorbeau hovel, Ma'am
Bougon, whose