him in the cellars at the Market and at Père Momie’s.
Maurice visited the restaurants where nihilists and anarchists take their meals. There he came across men dressed as women, gloomy and wild-looking youths, and blue-eyed octogenarians who laughed like little children. He observed, asked questions, was taken for a spy, had a knife thrust into him by a very beautiful woman, and the very next day continued his search in beer-houses, lodging-houses, houses of ill-fame, gambling-hells down by the fortifications, at the receivers of stolen goods, and among the “apaches.”
Seeing him thus pale, harassed, and silent, his mother grew worried.
“We must find him a wife,” she said. “It is a pity that Mademoiselle de la Verdelière has not a bigger fortune.”
Abbé Patouille did not hide his anxiety.
“This child,” he said, “is passing through a moral crisis.”
“I am more inclined to think,” rephed Monsieur René d’Esparvieu, “that he is under the influence of some bad woman. We must find him an occupation which will absorb him and flatter his vanity. I might get him appointed Secretary to the Committee for the Preservation of Country Churches, or Consulting Counsel to the Syndicate of Catholic Plumbers.”
