rything off."

Then Monsieur Lebigre wished the friends good night. He was very sleepy
and should sleep well, he said, with a yawn which revealed his big
teeth, while Rose gazed at him with an air of submissive humility.
However, he gave her a push, and told her to go and turn out the gas in
the little room.

On reaching the pavement, Gavard stumbled and nearly fell. And being in
a humorous vein, he thereupon exclaimed: "Confound it all! At any rate,
I don't seem to be leaning on anybody's lights."

This remark seemed to amuse the others, and the party broke up. A little
later Florent returned to Lebigre's, and indeed he became quite attached
to the "cabinet," finding a seductive charm in Robine's contemplative
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