“Ah, yes!  I should have forgotten that.  I will call on them, I promise you.”

Then Mathieu took her in his arms, and there was no ending to their leave-taking.  He still lingered.  She had begun to laugh again, while giving him many a kiss in return for his own.  There was all the love of bounding health between them, the joy that springs from the most perfect union, as when man and wife are but one both in flesh and in soul.

“Run off, run off, darling!  Remember to tell Constance that, before she goes into the country, she ought to run down here some Sunday with Maurice.”

“Yes, yes, I will tell her—­till to-night, darling.”

But he came back once more, caught her in a tight embrace, and pressed to her lips a long, loving kiss, which she returned with her whole heart.  And then he hurried away.

He usually took an omnibus on his arrival at the Northern Railway terminus.  But on the days when only thirty sous remained at home he bravely went through Paris on foot.  It was, too, a very fine walk by way of the Rue la Fayette, the Opera-house, the Boulevards, the Rue Royale, and then, after the Place de la Concorde, the Cours la Reine, the Alma bridge, and the Quai d’Orsay.

Beauchene’s works were at the very end of the Quai d’Orsay, between the Rue de la Federation and the Boulevard de Grenelle.  There was hereabouts a large square plot, at one end of which, facing the quay, stood a handsome private house of brickwork with white stone dressings, that had been erected by Leon Beauchene, father of Alexandre, the present master of the works.  From the balconies one could perceive the houses which were perched aloft in the midst of greenery on the height of Passy, beyond the Seine; whilst on the right arose the campanile of the Trocadero palace.  On one side, skirting the Rue de la Federation, one could still see a garden and a little house, which had been the modest dwelling of Leon Beauchene in the heroic days of desperate toil when he had laid the foundations of his fortune.  Then the factory buildings and sheds, quite a mass of grayish structures, overtopped by two huge chimneys, occupied both the back part of the ground and that which fringed the Boulevard de Grenelle, the latter being shut off by long windowless walls.  This important and well-known establishment manufactured chiefly agricultural appliances, from the most powerful machines to those ingenious and delicate implements on which particular care must be bestowed if perfection is to be attained.  In addition to the hundreds of men who worked there daily, there were some fifty women, burnishers and polishers.

The entry to the workshops and offices was in the Rue de la Federation, through a large carriage way, whence one perceived the far-spreading yard, with its paving stones invariably black and often streaked by rivulets of steaming water.  Dense smoke arose from the high chimneys, strident jets of steam emerged from the roof, whilst a low rumbling and a shaking of the ground betokened the activity within, the ceaseless bustle of labor.