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Updated: May 26, 2025
Then Chaine remained alone with Mathilde in the damp shop, amidst the heaps of clay and the puddles of water, while the chalky light from the whitened windows glared crudely over all the wretched untidiness. Meantime the four others, Claude and Mahoudeau, Jory and Sandoz, strolled along, seeming to take up the whole width of the Boulevard des Invalides.
'I was going upstairs, resumed Mahoudeau. 'Will you come with me? Claude, pale with suffering, raised his eyes every second. Ah! that terrible rumbling, that devouring gallop of the monster overhead, the shock of which he felt in his very limbs! He held out his hand without speaking. 'What! are you going to leave us? exclaimed Sandoz. Take just another turn with us, and we'll go away together.
With the cheese, however, when they had tasted some burgundy, a sharp little growth, of which the young couple had ordered a cask out of the profits of Sandoz's first novel, their voices rose to a higher key, and they all grew animated. 'So you have made an arrangement with Naudet, eh? asked Mahoudeau, whose bony cheeks seemed to have grown yet more hollow.
So he saw to the invitations; Claude and Christine naturally must come; next Jory and his wife, the latter of whom it had been necessary to receive since her marriage, then Dubuche, who always came alone, with Fagerolles, Mahoudeau, and finally Gagniere.
So cold was the studio that it froze inside as hard as it did out of doors, for, having been penniless for a whole week, Mahoudeau had gingerly eked out the little coal remaining to him, only lighting the stove for an hour or two of a morning.
He was gloomy, and, glancing at the fifteen or twenty strangers who followed, he murmured: 'Ah! poor chap! What! are there only we two? Dubuche was at Cannes with his children. Jory and Fagerolles kept away, the former hating the deceased and the latter being too busy. Mahoudeau alone caught the party up at the rise of the Rue Lepic, and he explained that Gagniere must have missed the train.
'By heavens, she's breaking to pieces! she is coming down! The clay, in thawing, had snapped the weak wooden trusses. There came a cracking noise, as if bones indeed were splitting; and Mahoudeau, with the same passionate gesture with which he had caressed the figure from afar, working himself into a fever, opened both arms, at the risk of being killed by the fall.
Sandoz declared that her name of Becot was very well suited for a novel; Claude asked whether she would consent to pose for a sketch; while Mahoudeau already pictured her as a Paris gamin, a statuette that would be sure to sell. She soon went off, however, and behind the gentleman's back she wafted kisses to the whole party, a shower of kisses which quite upset the impressionable Jory.
But he now gave a superb reply, the cry of a sage of deep experience. 'Oh, you fellows, you don't know the worth of money! This time he was hooted. What a philistine! And the invectives continued, when some light taps on one of the window-panes suddenly made the din cease. 'She is really becoming a nuisance, said Mahoudeau, with a gesture of annoyance. 'Eh? Who is it?
Yes, yes, it's something much more immaterial than a kiss, just a whiff of breath. 'Pon my honour, a fellow feels as if he were going to die. His eyes were moistening and he turned pale, as if experiencing some over-acute enjoyment. 'Eat your soup, said Mahoudeau; 'you'll tell us all about it afterwards.
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