“Well, the dust that you complain of is rather milder than that.  Anyway I don’t hear you coughing....  But if you’re ready we’ll be on our way.”

“Where shall we go?” asked Durtal.

Des Hermies did not answer.  They left the rue du Regard, in which Durtal lived, and went down the rue du Cherche-Midi as far as the Croix-Rouge.

“Let’s go on to the place Saint-Sulpice,” said Des Hermies, and after a silence he continued, “Speaking of dust, ’out of which we came and to which we shall return,’ do you know that after we are dead our corpses are devoured by different kinds of worms according as we are fat or thin?  In fat corpses one species of maggot is found, the rhizophagus, while thin corpses are patronized only by the phora.  The latter is evidently the aristocrat, the fastidious gourmet which turns up its nose at a heavy meal of copious breasts and juicy fat bellies.  Just think, there is no perfect equality, even in the manner in which we feed the worms.

“But this is where we stop.”

They had come to where the rue Ferou opens into the place Saint-Sulpice.  Durtal looked up and on an unenclosed porch in the flank of the church of Saint-Sulpice he read the placard, “Tower open to visitors.”

“Let’s go up,” said Des Hermies.

“What for!  In this weather?” and Durtal pointed at the yellow sky over which black clouds, like factory smoke, were racing, so low that the tin chimneys seemed to penetrate them and crenelate them with little spots of clarity.  “I am not enthusiastic about trying to climb a flight of broken, irregular stairs.  And anyway, what do you think you can see up there?  It’s misty and getting dark.  No, have a heart.”

“What difference is it to you where you take your airing?  Come on.  I assure you you will see something unusual.”

“Oh! you brought me here on purpose?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

He followed Des Hermies into the darkness under the porch.  At the back of the cellarway a little essence lamp, hanging from a nail, lighted a door, the tower entrance.

For a long time, in utter darkness, they climbed a winding stair.  Durtal was wondering where the keeper had gone, when, turning a corner, he saw a shaft of light, then he stumbled against the rickety supports of a “double-current” lamp in front of a door.  Des Hermies pulled a bell cord and the door swung back.

Above them on a landing they could see feet, whether of a man or of a woman they could not tell.

“Ah! it’s you, M. des Hermies,” and a woman bent over, describing an arc, so that her head was in a stream of light.  “Louis will be very glad to see you.”

“Is he in?” asked Des Hermies, reaching up and shaking hands with the woman.

“He is in the tower.  Won’t you stop and rest a minute?”

“Why, when we come down, if you don’t mind.”

“Then go up until you see a grated door—­but what an old fool I am!  You know the way as well as I do.”