n's home, where people do not have enough to eat every day in
the week, where the bottles are more frequently filled at the pump than
in the cellar, and where they wait until it is dark before lighting the
candles.

It was an old and sordid building; the walls were crumbling to pieces,
the grated, iron gates were eaten away by rust, the holes in the broken
windows had been mended with old newspapers, and the ancestral portraits
which hung against the walls, showed that it was no tiller of the soil,
nor miserable laborer whose strength had gradually worn out and bent his
back, who lived there. Great, knotty elm trees sheltered it, as if they
had been a tall, green screen, and a large garden, full of wild
rose-trees and of straggling plants, as well as of sickly-looking
vegetables, which sprang up half-withered from the sandy soil, went
down as far as the bank of the river.

From the house, one could hear the monotonous sound of the water, which
at one time rushed yellow and impetuous towards the sea, and then again
flowed back, as if driven by some invisible force towards the town which
could be seen in the distance, with its pointed spires, its ramparts, and
its ships at anchor by the side of the quay, and its citadel built on the
top of a hill.

A strong smell of the sea came from the offing, mingled with the resinous
smell of pine logs, and of the large nets with great pieces of sea-weed
clinging to them, which were drying in the sun.

Why had Monsieur d'Etchegorry, who did not like the country, who was of a
sociable rather than of a solitary nature, for he never walked alone, but
kept step with the retired officers who lived there, and frequently
played game after game at _piquet_ at the _cafe_, when he was in town,
buried himself in such a solitary place, by the side of a dusty road at
Boucau, a village close to the town, where on Sundays the soldiers took
off their tunics, and sat in their shirt sleeves in the public-houses,
drank the thin wine of the country, and teased the girls.

What secret reasons had he for selling the mansion which he had possessed
at Bayonne, close to the bishop's palace, and condemning his daughter, a
girl of nineteen, to such a dull, listless, solitary life; counting the
minutes far from everybody, as if she had been a nun, no one knew, but
most people said that he had lost immense sums in gambling, and had
wasted his fortune and ruined his credit in doubtful speculations. They
wonde