I get up to look at the stew.  The thick brown gravy is purring.  I can see pale bits of potato, and it is uncertainly spotted with the mucosity of onions.  Mame pours it into a big white plate.  “That’s for you,” she says; “now, what shall I have?”

We settle ourselves each side of the little swarthy table.  Mame is fumbling in her pocket.  Now her lean hand, lumpy and dark, unroots itself.  She produces a bit of cheese, scrapes it with a knife which she holds by the blade, and swallows it slowly.  By the rays of the lamp, which stands beside us, I see that her face is not dry.  A drop of water has lingered on the cheek that each mouthful protrudes, and glitters there.  Her great mouth works in all directions, and sometimes swallows the remains of tears.

So there we are, in front of our plates, of the salt which is placed on a bit of paper, of my share of jam, which is put into a mustard-pot.  There we are, narrowly close, our foreheads and hands brought together by the light, and for the rest but poorly clothed by the huge gloom.  Sitting in this jaded armchair, my hands on this ill-balanced table,—­which, if you lean on one side of it, begins at once to limp,—­I feel that I am deeply rooted where I am, in this old room, disordered as an abandoned garden, this worn-out room, where the dust touches you softly.

After we have eaten, our remarks grow rarer.  Then Mame begins again to mumble; once again she yields to emotion under the harsh flame of the lamp, and once again her eyes grow dim in her complicated Japanese mask that is crowned with cotton-wool, and something dimly shining flows from them.

The tears of the sensitive old soul plash on that lip so voluminous that it seems a sort of heart.  She leans towards me, she comes so near, so near, that I feel sure she is touching me.

I have only her in the world to love me really.  In spite of her humors and her lamentations I know well that she is always in the right.

I yawn, while she takes away the dirty plates and proceeds to hide them in a dark corner.  She fills the big bowl from the pitcher and then carries it along to the stove for the crockery.

Antonia has given me an appointment for eight o’clock, near the Kiosk.  It is ten past eight.  I go out.  The passage, the court,—­by night all these familiar things surround me even while they hide themselves.  A vague light still hovers in the sky.  Crillon’s prismatic shop gleams like a garnet in the bosom of the night, behind the riotous disorder of his buckets.  There I can see Crillon,—­he never seems to stop,—­filing something, examining his work close to a candle which flutters like a butterfly ensnared, and then, reaching for the glue-pot which steams on a little stove.  One can just see his face, the engrossed and heedless face of the artificer of the good old days; the black plates of his ill-shaven cheeks; and, protruding from his cap, a vizor of stiff hair.  He coughs, and the window-panes vibrate.