With a gesture he expressed his feelings concerning the drama that had just upset the Seguins’ household.  Valentine, like Marianne, was to become a mother.  For her part she was in despair at it, and her husband had given way to jealous fury.  For a time, amid all their quarrels, they had continued leading their usual life of pleasure, but she now spent her days on a couch, while he neglected her and reverted to a bachelor’s life.  It was a very painful story, but the doctor was in hopes that Marianne, on the occasion of her visit to the Seguins, might bring some good influence to bear on them.

He rose from his chair and was about to retire, when the attack which had all along threatened him burst forth.  The children, unsuspectedly rising from their chairs, had concerted together with a glance, and now they opened their campaign.  The worthy doctor all at once found the twins upon his shoulders, while the younger boy clasped him round the waist and the little girl clung to his legs.

“Puff! puff! do the railway train, do the railway train, please do.”

They pushed and shook him, amid peal after peal of flute-like laughter, while their father and mother rushed to his assistance, scolding and angry.  But he calmed the parents by saying:  “Let them be! they are simply wishing me good day.  And besides, I must bear with them, you know, since, as our friend Beauchene says, it is a little bit my fault if they are in the world.  What charms me with your children is that they enjoy such good health, just like their mother.  For the present, at all events, one can ask nothing more of them.”

When he had set them down on the floor, and given each a smacking kiss, he took hold of Marianne’s hands and said to her that everything was going on beautifully, and that he was very pleased.  Then he went off, escorted to the front door by Mathieu, the pair of them jesting and laughing gayly.

Directly after the midday meal Mathieu wished to go out, in order that Marianne might profit by the bright sunshine.  The children had been dressed in readiness before sitting down to table, and it was scarcely more than one o’clock when the family turned the corner of the Rue de la Federation and found itself upon the quays.

This portion of Grenelle, lying between the Champ de Mars and the densely populated streets of the centre of the district, has an aspect all its own, characterized by vast bare expanses, and long and almost deserted streets running at right angles and fringed by factories with lofty, interminable gray walls.  During work-hours nobody passes along these streets, and on raising one’s head one sees only lofty chimneys belching forth thick coal smoke above the roofs of big buildings with dusty window panes.  And if any large cart entrance happens to be open one may espy deep yards crowded with drays and full of acrid vapor.  The only sounds are the strident puffs of jets of steam, the dull rumbling of machinery, and the sudden rattle