And she added, indulgently: "Ah! if it were necessary to pick everybody to pieces!" All day long, in the linen-room, I have amused myself in calling up the queer things that happened in that house,--the passion for notoriety with which, from that time, Madame was so filled that she would prostitute herself to all the dirty journalists who would promise her an article on her husband's books or a word about her costumes and her _salon_, and Monsieur's complacency in letting this vile conduct go on, though perfectly aware of it. With admirable cynicism he said: "At any rate--it is less expensive than paying by the line at the newspaper offices." Monsieur, on his side, fell to the lowest depths of baseness and unscrupulousness. He called that the politics of the _salon_, and society diplomacy. I am going to write to Paris to have them send me my old master's new book. But how rotten it must be at bottom! XI _November 10._ Now all talk of the little Claire has ceased. As was expected, the case has been abandoned. So Joseph and the forest of Raillon will keep their secret forever. Of that poor little human creature no more will be said henceforth than of the body of a blackbird that dies in the woods, in a thicket. The father continues to break stone on the highway, as if nothing had happened, and the town, stirred and roused for a moment by this crime, resumes its usual aspect,--an aspect still more dismal because of the winter. The very bitter cold keeps people shut up in their houses. One can scarcely get a glimpse of their pale and sleepy faces behind the frosty windows, and in the streets one seldom meets anybody except ragged vagabonds and shivering dogs. To-day Madame sent me on an errand to the butcher's shop, and I took the dogs with me. While I was there, an old woman timidly entered the shop, and asked for meat,--"a little meat to make a little soup for my sick boy." The butcher selected, from the _débris_ piled up in a large copper pan, a dirty bit, half bone, half fat, and, after carefully weighing it, announced: "Fifteen sous." "Fifteen sous!" exclaimed the old woman; "but that is impossible! And how do you expect me to make soup out of that?" "As you like," said the butcher, throwing the piece back into the pan. "Only, you know, I am going to send you your bill to-day. If it is not paid by to-morrow, then the process-server!" "Give it to me," said the old woman, then, with resignation. When she had gone, the butcher explained to me: "Nevertheless, if we did not have the poor to buy the inferior parts, we really should not make enough out of an animal. But these wretches are getting to be very exacting nowadays." And, cutting off two long slices of good red meat, he threw them to the dogs. The dogs of the rich,--indeed! they are not poor.