She continued smiling like a worthy woman, whose feelings softened at the recollection of the past.  “You can have no idea how pleased I felt when I saw you pass just now, Monsieur Froment,” she resumed.  “Ah! it was a long time ago that I first had the honor of seeing you here!  You remember La Couteau, don’t you?  She was always complaining, was she not?  But she is very well pleased now; she and her husband have retired to a pretty little house of their own, with some little savings which they live on very quietly.  She is no longer young, but she has buried a good many in her time, and she’ll bury more before she has finished!  For instance, Madame Menoux—­you must surely remember Madame Menoux, the little haberdasher close by—­well, there was a woman now who never had any luck!  She lost her second child, and she lost that big fellow, her husband, whom she was so fond of, and she herself died of grief six months afterwards.  I did at one time think of taking her to Rougemont, where the air is so good for one’s health.  There are old folks of ninety living there.  Take La Couteau, for instance, she will live as long as she likes!  Oh! yes, it is a very pleasant part indeed, a perfect paradise.”

At these words the abominable Rougemont, the bloody Rougemont, arose before Mathieu’s eyes, rearing its peaceful steeple above the low plain, with its cemetery paved with little Parisians, where wild flowers bloomed and hid the victims of so many murders.

But Celeste was rattling on again, saying:  “You remember Madame Bourdieu whom you used to know in the Rue de Miromesnil; she died very near our village on some property where she went to live when she gave up business, a good many years ago.  She was luckier than her colleague La Rouche, who was far too good-natured with people.  You must have read about her case in the newspapers, she was sent to prison with a medical man named Sarraille.”

“La Rouche!  Sarraille!” Yes, Mathieu had certainly read the trial of those two social pests, who were fated to meet at last in their work of iniquity.  And what an echo did those names awaken in the past:  Valerie Morange!  Reine Morange!  Already in the factory yard Mathieu had fancied that he could see the shadow of Morange gliding past him—­the punctual, timid, soft-hearted accountant, whom misfortune and insanity had carried off into the darkness.  And suddenly the unhappy man here again appeared to Mathieu, like a wandering phantom, the restless victim of all the imbecile ambition, all the desperate craving for pleasure which animated the period; a poor, weak, mediocre being, so cruelly punished for the crimes of others, that he was doubtless unable to sleep in the tomb into which he had flung himself, bleeding, with broken limbs.  And before Mathieu’s eyes there likewise passed the spectre of Seraphine, with the fierce and pain-fraught face of one who is racked and killed by insatiate desire.

“Well, excuse me for having ventured to stop you, Monsieur Froment,” Celeste concluded; “but I am very, very pleased at having met you again.”