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slipped some old newspapers between the floorboards and the carpet so that the latter should not get wet.
    Day dawned, but it was impossible to tell whether there was a thin drizzle falling or whether it was just fog that was filling the street. Big limpid drops were falling from the cornices. The first trams, with their lights still on, seemed to be drifting past.
    â€˜When I think that I can’t even help you!’
    They were so very much at home that morning! On the second floor of Cession’s, their flat seemed to be hanging in the air at the very end of the world. Désiré hummed to himself while he was shaving. Élise tried to banish her anxiety or sadness—she did not know quite what to call the feeling which stole over her whenever she was going to be unhappy.
    When she had been a little girl and had not yet begun thinking about such things, disaster had struck at her family without warning. She had found herself practically on the streets, in deep mourning, with her mother and her sister Félicie, and her brothers and sisters scattered far and wide; and since then she had always had the impression that she was subject to a special fate, that she was not like other people. She was seized with sudden, irresistible urges to cry, and she had shed a great many tears, even during the first days of her marriage.
    â€˜I’ve got so much into the habit of crying,’ she had tried to explain to Désiré at the time. ‘I just can’t help it.’
    Wasn’t the child too red? He was breathing badly. She was sure that he was breathing badly, as if he were suffering from some obstruction, but she did not dare to say so. Soon her mother-in-law would be arriving and Élise was dreading this visit. Her mother-in-law did not like her.
    â€˜Get married if you want to, son. That’s your affair, but if you want my opinion …’
    A girl from the other side of the bridges, a girl so to speak without a family and in very poor health, a girl who, when she was with her sisters, spoke a language nobody could understand.
    â€˜Valérie’s late,’ sighed Élise, looking at the clock. ‘You can go, Désiré. You mustn’t be late. I shall be quite all right waiting by myself.’
    He had put on the coarse blue uniform of the civic guard and buckled his belt. Out of a white cardboard box he had taken his peculiar cap in the shape of a top hat surmounted by a reddish-brown cock’s feather, and after putting it on he climbed on to a chair—the old chair, the one on to which they always climbed—to get his Mauser rifle from the top of the wardrobe. Although the rifle was not loaded, Élise was afraid of it.
    â€˜Go on! I tell you I shall be all right on my own…’
    He waited, standing by the window which had taken on the bluey-green whiteness of winter clouds. The shutters over the shop windows remained closed. Now and then some black silhouettes slipped past the house fronts, but very few, for people were taking advantage of the fact that it was Sunday to stay in bed.
    â€˜It’s Valérie! Off you go! You’re late.’
    He kissed her and his moustache smelled of shaving-soap. He did not dare to touch the baby’s soft skin with his spiky whiskers.
    â€˜Have I kept you waiting, Désiré?’
    â€˜Look, Valérie. He absolutely insisted on doing the housework and washing the nappies.’
    Désiré had scarcely started going downstairs when Élise got half out of bed and bent over the cradle.
    â€˜Come and look, Valérie. Feel him. Don’t you think he’s too hot?’
    â€˜Of course not, you silly!’
    Everything seemed to be in order in the flat and yet Élise’s gaze discovered something wrong.
    â€˜Valérie, put the wedge back in place, will you?’
    It was a piece of wood a few inches long which had been slipped under one foot of the wardrobe to keep it steady, and which was