s. But
the latter, whom he feared would have already gone, was equally late in
consequence of a sudden indisposition which had come upon his mother. It
was nothing serious. She had merely passed a bad night, but it had for a
while quite upset him with anxiety. Now, easy in mind again, Sandoz told
Claude that Dubuche had written saying that they were not to wait for
him, and giving an appointment at the Palais. They therefore started
off, and as it was nearly eleven, they decided to lunch in a deserted
little _cremerie_ in the Rue St. Honore, which they did very leisurely,
seized with laziness amidst all their ardent desire to see and know;
and enjoying, as it were, a kind of sweet, tender sadness from lingering
awhile and recalling memories of their youth.

One o'clock was striking when they crossed the Champs Elysees. It was
a lovely day, with a limpid sky, to which the breeze, still somewhat
chilly, seemed to impart a brighter azure. Beneath the sun, of the
hue of ripe corn, the rows of chestnut trees showed new foliage of a
delicate and seemingly freshly varnished green; and the fountains with
their leaping sheafs of water, the well-kept lawns, the deep vistas of
the pathways, and the broad open spaces, all lent an air of luxurious
grandeur to the panorama. A few carriages, very few at that early
hour, were ascending the avenue, while a stream of bewildered, bustling
people, suggesting a swarm of ants, plunged into the huge archway of the
Palais de l'Industrie.

When they were inside, Claude shivered slightly while crossing the
gigantic vestibule, which was as cold as a cellar, with a damp pavement
which resounded beneath one's feet, like the flagstones of a church.
He glanced right and left at the two monumental stairways, and asked
contemptuously: 'I say, are we going through their dirty Salon?'

'Oh! no, dash it!' answered Sandoz. 'Let's cut through the garden. The
western staircase over there leads to "the Rejected."'

Then they passed disdainfully between the two little tables of the
catalogue vendors. Between the huge red velvet curtains and beyond a
shady porch appeared the garden, roofed in with glass. At that time of
day it was almost deserted; there were only some people at the buffet
under the clock, a throng of people lunching. The crowd was in the
galleries on the first floor, and the white statues alone edged the
yellow-sanded pathways which with stretches of crude colour intersected
the green lawns