The good fellow is angry.  He raises his great fist and shakes it in space like a medieval mace.  Pointing where Brisbille has just plunged floundering into the night, he says, “That’s what Socialists are,—­the conquering people what can’t stand up on their legs!  I may be a botcher in life, but I’m for peace and order.  Good-night, good-night.  Is she well, Aunt Josephine?  I’m for tranquillity and liberty and order.  That’s why I’ve always kept clear of their crowd.  A bit since, I saw her trotting past, as vivacious as a young girl,—­but there, I talk and I talk!”

He enters his shop, but turns on his heel and calls me back, with a mysterious sign.  “You know they’ve all arrived up yonder at the castle?” Respect has subdued his voice; a vision is absorbing him of the lords and ladies of the manor, and as he leaves me he bows, instinctively.

His shop is a narrow glass cage, which is added to our house, like a family relation.  Within I can just make out the strong, plebeian framework of Crillon himself, upright beside a serrated heap of ruins, over which a candle is enthroned.  The light which falls on his accumulated tools and on those hanging from the wall makes a decoration obscurely golden around the picture of this wise man; this soul all innocent of envious demands, turning again to his botching, as his father and grandfather botched.

I have mounted the steps and pushed our door; the gray door, whose only relief is the key.  The door goes in grumblingly, and makes way for me into the dark passage, which was formerly paved, though now the traffic of soles has kneaded it with earth, and changed it into a footpath.  My forehead strikes the lamp, which is hooked on the wall; it is out, oozing oil, and it stinks.  One never sees that lamp, and always bangs it.

And though I had hurried so—­I don’t know why—­to get home, at this moment of arrival I slow down.  Every evening I have the same small and dull disillusion.

I go into the room which serves us as kitchen and dining-room, where my aunt is lying.  This room is buried in almost complete darkness.

“Good evening, Mame.”

A sigh, and then a sob arise from the bed crammed against the pale celestial squares of the window.

Then I remember that there was a scene between my old aunt and me after our early morning coffee.  Thus it is two or three times a week.  This time it was about a dirty window-pane, and on this particular morning, exasperated by the continuous gush of her reproaches, I flung an offensive word, and banged the door as I went off to work.  So Mame has had to weep all the day.  She has fostered and ruminated her spleen, and sniffed up her tears, even while busy with household duties.  Then, as the day declined, she put out the lamp and went to bed, with the object of sustaining and displaying her chagrin.

When I came in she was in the act of peeling invisible potatoes; there are potatoes scattered over the floor, everywhere.  My feet kick them and send them rolling heavily among odds and ends of utensils and a soft deposit of garments that are lying about.  As soon as I am there my aunt overflows with noisy tears.