“Very well, thank you; has any one been here in my absence?”

“I was going to tell you, sir; the plumber has been here, because the tap of your cistern came off in my hand.  It wasn’t my fault; there had been a heavy rain that morning.  So—­”

“Never mind, it’s only a tap to pay for.  We won’t say any more about it.  But did any one come to see me?”

“Ah, let me see—­yes.  A big gentleman, rather red-faced, with his wife, a fat lady, with a small voice; a fine woman, rather in my style, and their daughter—­but perhaps you know her, sir?”

“Yes, Madame Menin, you need not describe her.  You told them that I was away, and they said they were very sorry.”

“Especially the lady.  She puffed and panted and sighed:  ’Dear Monsieur Mouillard!  How unlucky we are, Madame Menin; we have just come to Paris as he has gone to Italy.  My husband and I would have liked so much to see him!  You may think it fanciful, but I should like above all things to look round his rooms.  A student’s rooms must be so interesting.  Stay there, Berthe, my child.’  I told them there was nothing very interesting, and that their daughter might just as well come in too, and then I showed them everything.”

“They didn’t stay long, I suppose?”

“Quite long enough.  They were an age looking at your photograph album.  I suppose they haven’t got such things where they come from.  Madame Lorinet couldn’t tear herself away from it.  ‘Nothing but men,’ she said, ’have you noticed that, Jules?’—­’Well, Madame,’ I said, ’that’s just how it is here; except for me, and I don’t count, only gentlemen come here.  I’ve kept house for bachelors where—­well, there are not many—­’

“That will do, Madame Menin; that will do.  I know you always think too highly of me.  Hasn’t Lampron been here?”

“Yes, sir; the day before yesterday.  He was going off for a fortnight or three weeks into the country to paint a portrait of some priest—­a bishop, I think.”

July 15th.

“Midi, roi des etes.”  I know by heart that poem by “Monsieur le Comte de l’Isle,” as my Uncle Mouillard calls him.  Its lines chime in my ears every day when I return from luncheon to the office I have left an hour before.  Merciful heaven, how hot it is!  I am just back from a hot climate, but it was nothing compared to Paris in July.  The asphalt melts underfoot; the wood pavement is simmering in a viscous mess of tar; the ideal is forced to descend again and again to iced lager beer; the walls beat back the heat in your face; the dust in the public gardens, ground to atoms beneath the tread of many feet, rises in clouds from under the water-cart to fall, a little farther on, in white showers upon the passers-by.  I wonder that, as a finishing stroke, the cannon in the Palais Royal does not detonate all day long.

To complete my misery, all my acquaintances are out of town:  the Boule family is bathing at Trouville; the second clerk has not returned from his holiday; the fourth only waited for my arrival to get away himself; Lampron, detained by my Lord Bishop and the forest shades, gives no sign of his existence; even Monsieur and Madame Plumet have locked up their flat and taken the train for Barbizon.