The carriage approached the Pont-Neuf.  They stepped out.  A dry cold made vivid the sombre January weather.  Under her veil Therese joyfully inhaled the wind which swept on the hardened soil a dust white as salt.  She was glad to wander freely among unknown things.  She liked to see the stony landscape which the clearness of the air made distinct; to walk quickly and firmly on the quay where the trees displayed the black tracery of their branches on the horizon reddened by the smoke of the city; to look at the Seine.  In the sky the first stars appeared.

“One would think that the wind would put them out,” she said.

He observed, too, that they scintillated a great deal.  He did not think it was a sign of rain, as the peasants believe.  He had observed, on the contrary, that nine times in ten the scintillation of stars was an augury of fine weather.

Near the little bridge they found old iron-shops lighted by smoky lamps.  She ran into them.  She turned a corner and went into a shop in which queer stuffs were hanging.  Behind the dirty panes a lighted candle showed pots, porcelain vases, a clarinet, and a bride’s wreath.

He did not understand what pleasure she found in her search.

“These shops are full of vermin.  What can you find interesting in them?”

“Everything.  I think of the poor bride whose wreath is under that globe.  The dinner occurred at Maillot.  There was a policeman in the procession.  There is one in almost all the bridal processions one sees in the park on Saturdays.  Don’t they move you, my friend, all these poor, ridiculous, miserable beings who contribute to the grandeur of the past?”

Among cups decorated with flowers she discovered a little knife, the ivory handle of which represented a tall, thin woman with her hair arranged a la Maintenon.  She bought it for a few sous.  It pleased her, because she already had a fork like it.  Le Menil confessed that he had no taste for such things, but said that his aunt knew a great deal about them.  At Caen all the merchants knew her.  She had restored and furnished her house in proper style.  This house was noted as early as 1690.  In one of its halls were white cases full of books.  His aunt had wished to put them in order.  She had found frivolous books in them, ornamented with engravings so unconventional that she had burned them.

“Is she silly, your aunt?” asked Therese.

For a long time his anecdotes about his aunt had made her impatient.  Her friend had in the country a mother, sisters, aunts, and numerous relatives whom she did not know and who irritated her.  He talked of them with admiration.  It annoyed her that he often visited them.  When he came back, she imagined that he carried with him the odor of things that had been packed up for years.  He was astonished, naively, and he suffered from her antipathy to them.

He said nothing.  The sight of a public-house, the panes of which were flaming, recalled to him the poet Choulette, who passed for a drunkard.  He asked her if she still saw that Choulette, who called on her wearing a mackintosh and a red muffler.