sences from the shop were growing more and more frequent, and Monsieur Blancmesnil never called when she was not there. The reason of this was that they were meeting three times a week at five o’clock in a house close to the Champs Elysées. Père Guinardon knew nothing of that. He did not know the full extent of his misfortune, but he suffered.
Monsieur Sariette shook his old friend by the hand; but he did not enquire for the young Octavie, for he refused to recognise the connexion. He would sooner have talked about Zéphyrine, who had been so cruelly deserted, and whom he hoped the old man would make his lawful wife. But Monsieur Sariette was prudent. He contented himself with asking Guinardon how he was.
“Perfectly well,” was Guinardon’s reply; but he felt ill, for either age and love-making had undermined his sturdy constitution, or else young Octavie’s faithlessness had dealt her lover a fatal blow. “God be praised,” he went on, “I still retain my powers of mind and body. I am chaste. Be chaste, Sariette. Chastity is strength.”
That evening Père Guinardon had taken some specially valuable books out of the king-wood cabinet to show to a distinguished bibliophile, Monsieur Victor Meyer, and after the latter’s departure he had dropped off to sleep without putting them back in their places. Books had an attraction for Monsieur Sariette, and seeing
