After every meal he thus during more than an hour, sipped three or four small glasses of brandy, which stupefied him by degrees, and then his head dropped onto his chest, he shut his eyes and went to sleep:  then, having drunk it, he raised himself on the seat covered with red velvet, pulled his trousers up, and his waistcoat down, so as to cover the linen which appeared between the two, drew down his shirt sleeves and took up the newspapers again, which he had already read in the morning, and read them all through again, from beginning to end, and between four and five o’clock he went for a walk on the boulevards, to get a little fresh air, as he used to say, and then came back to the seat which had been reserved for him, and asked for his absinthe.  He used to talk to the regular customers, whose acquaintance he had made.  They discussed the news of the day, and political events, and that carried him on till dinner-time, and he spent the evening like he had the afternoon, until it was time to close.  That was a terrible moment for him, when he was obliged to go out into the dark, into the empty room full of dreadful recollections, of horrible thoughts and of mental agony.  He no longer saw any of his old friends, none of his relations, nobody who might remind him of his past life.  But as his apartments were a hell to him, he took a room in a large hotel, a good room on the ground floor, so as to see the passers-by.  He was no longer alone in that great building, he felt people swarming round him, he heard voices in the adjoining rooms, and when his former sufferings tormented him too much at the sight of his bed which was turned back, and of his solitary fire-place, he went out into the wide passages and walked up and down them like a sentinel, before all the closed doors, and looked sadly at the shoes standing in couples outside each, women’s little boots by the side of men’s thick ones, and he thought that no doubt all these people were happy, and were sleeping sweetly side by side or in each other’s arms, in their warm bed.

Five years passed thus; five miserable years with no other events except from time to time a passing love affair which lasted a couple of hours at the cost of forty francs.  But one day when he was taking his usual walk between the Madeleine and the Rue Drouot, he suddenly saw a lady, whose bearing struck him.  A tall gentleman and a child were with her, and all three were walking in front of him.  He asked himself where he had seen them before, when suddenly he recognized a movement of her hand:  it was his wife, his wife with Limousin and his child, his little George.

His heart beat as if it would suffocate him, but he did not stop, for he wished to see them and he followed them.  They looked like a family of the better middle class.  Henriette was leaning on Paul’s arm and speaking to him in a low voice and looking at him sideways occasionally.  Parent saw her side face, and recognized its graceful outlines, the movements of her lips, her smile and her caressing looks, but the child chiefly took up his attention.  How tall and strong he was!  Parent could not see his face, but only his long, fair curls.  That tall boy with bare legs, who was walking by his mother’s side like a little man, was George.