Her short speech was productive of embarrassment among the party.  Delaherche conducted the captain to his study, where he saw him safely bestowed upon the sofa; Gilberte moved lightly off about her business, no more disconcerted by her rebuff than is the bird that shakes its wings in gay defiance of the shower; while the handmaid to whom Jean had been intrusted led him by a very labyrinth of passages and staircases through the various departments of the factory.

The Weiss family lived in the Rue des Voyards, but their house, which was Delaherche’s property, communicated with the great structure in the Rue Maqua.  The Rue des Voyards was at that time one of the most squalid streets in Sedan, being nothing more than a damp, narrow lane, its normal darkness intensified by the proximity of the ramparts, which ran parallel to it.  The roofs of the tall houses almost met, the dark passages were like the mouths of caverns, and more particularly so at that end where rose the high college walls.  Weiss, however, with free quarters and free fuel on his third floor, found the location a convenient one on account of its nearness to his office, to which he could descend in slippers without having to go around by the street.  His life had been a happy one since his marriage with Henriette, so long the object of his hopes and wishes since first he came to know her at Chene, filling her dead mother’s place when only six years old and keeping the house for her father, the tax-collector; while he, entering the big refinery almost on the footing of a laborer, was picking up an education as best he could, and fitting himself for the accountant’s position which was the reward of his unremitting toil.  And even when he had attained to that measure of success his dream was not to be realized; not until the father had been removed by death, not until the brother at Paris had been guilty of those excesses:  that brother Maurice to whom his twin sister had in some sort made herself a servant, to whom she had sacrificed her little all to make him a gentleman—­not until then was Henriette to be his wife.  She had never been aught more than a little drudge at home; she could barely read and write; she had sold house, furniture, all she had, to pay the young man’s debts, when good, kind Weiss came to her with the offer of his savings, together with his heart and his two strong arms; and she had accepted him with grateful tears, bringing him in return for his devotion a steadfast, virtuous affection, replete with tender esteem, if not the stormier ardors of a passionate love.  Fortune had smiled on them; Delaherche had spoken of giving Weiss an interest in the business, and when children should come to bless their union their felicity would be complete.

“Look out!” the servant said to Jean; “the stairs are steep.”

He was stumbling upward as well as the intense darkness of the place would let him, when suddenly a door above was thrown open, a broad belt of light streamed out across the landing, and he heard a soft voice saying: