In the street, shadow and silence.  In the distance are venturing shapes, people emerging or entering, and some light echoing sounds.  Almost at once, on the corner, I see Monsieur Joseph Boneas vanishing, stiff as a ramrod.  I recognized the thick white kerchief, which consolidates the boils on his neck.  As I pass the hairdresser’s door it opens, just as it did a little while ago, and his agreeable voice says, “That’s all there is to it, in business.”  “Absolutely,” replies a man who is leaving.  In the oven of the street one can see only his littleness—­he must be a considerable personage, all the same.  Monsieur Pocard is always applying himself to business and thinking of great schemes.  A little farther, in the depths of a cavity, stoppered by an iron-grilled window, I divine the presence of old Eudo, the bird of ill omen, the strange old man who coughs, and has a bad eye, and whines continually.  Even indoors he must wear his mournful cloak and the lamp-shade of his hood.  People call him a spy, and not without reason.

Here is the Kiosk.  It is waiting quite alone, with its point in the darkness.  Antonia has not come, for she would have waited for me.  I am impatient first, and then relieved.  A good riddance.

No doubt Antonia is still tempting when she is present.  There is a reddish fever in her eyes, and her slenderness sets you on fire.  But I am hardly in harmony with the Italian.  She is particularly engrossed in her private affairs, with which I am not concerned.  Big Victorine, always ready, is worth a hundred of her; or Madame Lacaille, the pensively vicious; though I am equally satiated of her, too.  Truth to tell, I plunge unreflectingly into a heap of amorous adventures which I shortly find vulgar.  But I can never resist the magic of a first temptation.

I shall not wait.  I go away.  I skirt the forge of the ignoble Brisbille.  It is the last house in that chain of low hills which is the street.  Out of the deep dark the smithy window flames with vivid orange behind its black tracery.  In the middle of that square-ruled page of light I see transparently outlined the smith’s eccentric silhouette, now black and sharp, now softly huge.  Spectrally through the glare, and in blundering frenzy, he strives and struggles and fumbles horribly on the anvil.  Swaying, he seems to rush to right and to left, like a passenger on a hell-bound ferry.  The more drunk he is, the more furiously he falls upon his iron and his fire.

I return home.  Just as I am about to enter a timid voice calls me—­“Simon!”

It is Antonia.  So much the worse for her.  I hurry in, followed by the weak appeal.