No! never a wife, no mistress, nothing!  Now his grief was his wife, and lived with him.

The widower’s morning awakening was frightful above all things else-his awakening in the large bed that now had but one pillow.  It was there that he had once had the exquisite pleasure of watching his dear Lucie every morning when asleep; for she did not like to get up early, and sometimes he had jokingly scolded her for it.  What serenity upon this delicate, sweet face, with its closed eyes, nestling among her beautiful, disordered hair!  How chaste this lovely young wife was in her unconstraint!  She had thrown one of her arms outside of the covering, and the neck of her nightrobe, having slipped down, showed such a pure white shoulder and delicate neck.  He leaned over the half-opened mouth, which exhaled a warm and living odor, something like the perfume of a flower, to inhale it, and a tender pride swept over him when he thought that she was his, his wife, this delicious creature who was almost a child yet, and that her heart was given to him forever.  He could not resist it; he touched his young wife’s lips with his own.  She trembled under the kiss and opened her eyes, when the astonishment of the awakening was at once transformed into a happy smile as she met her husband’s glance.  Oh, blissful moment!  But in spite of all, one must be sensible.  He recalled that the milk-maid had left at daybreak her pot of milk at the door of their apartment; that the fire was not lighted, and that he must be at the office early, as the time for promotions was drawing near.  Giving another kiss to the half-asleep Lucie, he said to her, in a coaxing tone, “Now then, Lucie, my child, it is half-past eight.  Up, up with you, lazy little one!”

How could he console himself for such lost happiness?  He had his son, yes—­and he loved him very much—­but the sight of Amedee increased M. Violette’s grief; for the child grew to look more like his mother every day.

CHAPTER IV

THE DEMON ABSINTHE

Three or four times a year M. Violette, accompanied by his son, paid a visit to an uncle of his deceased wife, whose heir Amedee might some day become.

M. Isidore Gaufre had founded and made successful a large house for Catholic books and pictures, to which he had added an important agency for the sale of all kinds of religious objects.  This vast establishment was called, by a stroke of genius of its proprietor, “Bon Marche des Paroisses,” and was famous among all the French clergy.  At last it occupied the principal part of the house and all the out-buildings of an old hotel on the Rue Servandoni, constructed in the pompous and magnificent style of the latter part of the seventeenth century.  He did a great business there.

All day long, priests and clerical-looking gentlemen mounted the long flight of steps that led to a spacious first floor, lighted by large, high windows surmounted by grotesque heads.  There the long-bearded missionaries came to purchase their cargoes of glass beads or imitation coral rosaries, before embarking for the East, or the Gaboon, to convert the negroes and the Chinese.