Mother Faucheur's omelettes!' said
Sandoz. 'The place is done for. We are going for a turn, eh?'

Claude was inclined to refuse. Ever since the morning he had had but
one idea--that of walking on as fast as possible, as if each step would
shorten the disagreeable task and bring him back to Paris. His heart,
his head, his whole being had remained there. He looked neither to right
nor to left, he glided along without distinguishing aught of the
fields or trees, having but one fixed idea in his brain, a prey to such
hallucinations that at certain moments he fancied the point of the
Cite rose up and called to him from amid the vast expanse of stubble.
However, Sandoz's proposal aroused memories in his mind; and, softening
somewhat, he replied:

'Yes, that's it, we'll have a look.'

But as they advanced along the river bank, he became indignant and
grieved. He could scarcely recognise the place. A bridge had been built
to connect Bennecourt with Bonnieres: a bridge, good heavens! in the
place of the old ferry-boat, grating against its chain--the old black
boat which, cutting athwart the current, had been so full of interest to
the artistic eye. Moreover, a dam established down-stream at Port-Villez
had raised the level of the river, most of the islands of yore were
now submerged, and the little armlets of the stream had become broader.
There were no more pretty nooks, no more rippling alleys amid which one
could lose oneself; it was a disaster that inclined one to strangle all
the river engineers!

'Why, that clump of pollards still emerging from the water on the left,'
cried Claude, 'was the Barreux Island, where we used to chat together,
lying on the grass! You remember, don't you? Ah! the scoundrels!'

Sandoz, who could never see a tree felled without shaking his fist at
the wood-cutter, turned pale with anger, and felt exasperated that the
authorities had thus dared to mutilate nature.

Then, as Claude approached his old home, he became silent, and his teeth
clenched. The house had been sold to some middle-class folk, and
now there was an iron gate, against which he pressed his face. The
rose-bushes were all dead, the apricot trees were dead also; the garden,
which looked very trim, with its little pathways and its square-cut beds
of flowers and vegetables, bordered with box, was reflected in a large
ball of plated glass set upon a stand in the very centre of it; and the
house, newly whitewashed and painted at the