Her carriage left her at the corner of a street.

There, under the roof of a tall house, behind five windows, in a small, neat apartment, Madame Marmet had lived since the death of her husband.

Countess Martin found her in her modest drawing-room, opposite M. Lagrange, half asleep in a deep armchair.  This worldly old savant had remained ever faithful to her.  He it was who, the day after M. Marmet’s funeral, had conveyed to the unfortunate widow the poisoned speech delivered by Schmoll.  She had fainted in his arms.  Madame Marmet thought that he lacked judgment, but he was her best friend.  They dined together often with rich friends.

Madame Martin, slender and erect in her zibeline corsage opening on a flood of lace, awakened with the charming brightness of her gray eyes the good man, who was susceptible to the graces of women.  He had told her the day before how the world would come to an end.  He asked her whether she had not been frightened at night by pictures of the earth devoured by flames or frozen to a mass of ice.  While he talked to her with affected gallantry, she looked at the mahogany bookcase.  There were not many books in it, but on one of the shelves was a skeleton in armor.  It amazed one to see in this good lady’s house that Etruscan warrior wearing a green bronze helmet and a cuirass.  He slept among boxes of bonbons, vases of gilded porcelain, and carved images of the Virgin, picked up at Lucerne and on the Righi.  Madame Marmet, in her widowhood, had sold the books which her husband had left.  Of all the ancient objects collected by the archaeologist, she had retained nothing except the Etruscan.  Many persons had tried to sell it for her.  Paul Vence had obtained from the administration a promise to buy it for the Louvre, but the good widow would not part with it.  It seemed to her that if she lost that warrior with his green bronze helmet she would lose the name that she wore worthily, and would cease to be the widow of Louis Marmet of the Academie des Inscriptions.

“Do not be afraid, Madame; a comet will not soon strike the earth.  Such a phenomenon is very improbable.”

Madame Martin replied that she knew no serious reason why the earth and humanity should not be annihilated at once.

Old Lagrange exclaimed with profound sincerity that he hoped the cataclysm would come as late as possible.

She looked at him.  His bald head could boast only a few hairs dyed black.  His eyelids fell like rags over eyes still smiling; his cheeks hung in loose folds, and one divined that his body was equally withered.  She thought, “And even he likes life!”

Madame Marmet hoped, too, that the end of the world was not near at hand.

“Monsieur Lagrange,” said Madame Martin, “you live, do you not, in a pretty little house, the windows of which overlook the Botanical Gardens?  It seems to me it must be a joy to live in that garden, which makes me think of the Noah’s Ark of my infancy, and of the terrestrial paradises in the old Bibles.”