losed the gate upon the deserted garden.

VII

WHEN Claude found himself once more on the pavement of Paris he was
seized with a feverish longing for hubbub and motion, a desire to gad
about, scour the whole city, and see his chums. He was off the moment
he awoke, leaving Christine to get things shipshape by herself in the
studio which they had taken in the Rue de Douai, near the Boulevard de
Clichy. In this way, on the second day of his arrival, he dropped in at
Mahoudeau's at eight o'clock in the morning, in the chill, grey November
dawn which had barely risen.

However, the shop in the Rue du Cherche-Midi, which the sculptor still
occupied, was open, and Mahoudeau himself, half asleep, with a white
face, was shivering as he took down the shutters.

Ah! it's you. The devil! you've got into early habits in the country. So
it's settled--you are back for good?'

'Yes; since the day before yesterday.'

'That's all right. Then we shall see something of each other. Come in;
it's sharp this morning.'

But Claude felt colder in the shop than outside. He kept the collar
of his coat turned up, and plunged his hands deep into his pockets;
shivering before the dripping moisture of the bare walls, the muddy
heaps of clay, and the pools of water soddening the floor. A blast of
poverty had swept into the place, emptying the shelves of the casts
from the antique, and smashing stands and buckets, which were now held
together with bits of rope. It was an abode of dirt and disorder,
a mason's cellar going to rack and ruin. On the window of the door,
besmeared with whitewash, there appeared in mockery, as it were, a large
beaming sun, roughly drawn with thumb-strokes, and ornamented in the
centre with a face, the mouth of which, describing a semicircle, seemed
likely to burst with laughter.

'Just wait,' said Mahoudeau, 'a fire's being lighted. These confounded
workshops get chilly directly, with the water from the covering cloths.'

At that moment, Claude, on turning round, noticed Chaine on his knees
near the stove, pulling the straw from the seat of an old stool to light
the coals with. He bade him good-morning, but only elicited a muttered
growl, without succeeding in making him look up.

'And what are you doing just now, old man?' he asked the sculptor.

'Oh! nothing of much account. It's been a bad year--worse than the last
one, which wasn't worth a rap. There's a crisis in the church-statue
business. Yes, the ma