he artist and the young girl were a week without entering on those
neighborly relations which are almost always forced on one when dwelling
on the same floor. However, without having exchanged a word, they were
already acquainted with one another. Francine knew that her neighbor was
a poor devil of an artist, and Jacques had learned that his was a little
seamstress who had quitted her family to escape the ill-usage of a
stepmother. She accomplished miracles of economy to make both ends meet,
and, as she had never known pleasure, had no longing for it. This is
how the pair came under the common law of partition walls. One evening
in April, Jacques came home worn out with fatigue, fasting since
morning, and profoundly sad with one of those vague sadnesses which have
no precise cause, and which seize on you anywhere and at all times; a
kind of apoplexy of the heart to which poor wretches living alone are
especially subject. Jacques, who felt stifling in his narrow room,
opened the window to breathe a little. The evening was a fine one, and
the setting sun displayed its melancholy splendors above the hills of
Montmartre. Jacques remained pensively at his window listening to the
winged chorus of spring harmony which added to his sadness. Seeing a
raven fly by uttering a croak, he thought of the days when ravens
brought food to Elijah, the pious recluse, and reflected that these
birds were no longer so charitable. Then, not being able to stand it any
longer, he closed his window, drew the curtain, and, as he had not the
wherewithal to buy oil for his lamp, lit a resin taper that he had
brought back from a trip to the Grande-Chartreuse. Sadder than ever he
filled his pipe.

"Luckily, I still have enough tobacco to hide the pistol," murmured he,
and he began to smoke.

My friend Jacques must have been very sad that evening to think about
hiding the pistol. It was his supreme resource on great crises, and was
usually pretty successful. The plan was as follows. Jacques smoked
tobacco on which he used to sprinkle a few drops of laudanum, and he
would smoke until the cloud of smoke from his pipe became thick enough
to veil from him all the objects in his little room, and, above all, a
pistol hanging on the wall. It was a matter of half a score pipes. By
the time the pistol was wholly invisible it almost always happened that
the smoke and the laudanum combined would send Jacques off to sleep, and
it also often happened that his sad