Julien feared that they might complain of him in the neighborhood, but they sleep soundly in the country towns. Besides, Quatre-Femmes Square was inhabited only by a notary, M. Savournin, and a retired gendarme, Captain Pidoux, very convenient neighbors who went to bed and to sleep at nine o'clock. Julien was more anxious in regard to the inmates of a noble mansion, the Marsanne residence, which reared itself on the other side of the square, directly in front of his windows. It had a sad, gray facade, of the severity of a monastery. A flight of five steps, invaded by weeds, led up to a round door that was studded with enormous nails. The only story had ten windows in a row, the shutters of which were opened and closed always at the same hours, without allowing a view of the rooms behind their heavy drawn curtains. To the left, the large chestnut trees of the garden made a green mass that spread in a widening wave to the ramparts. Throughout the countryside, the mansion was celebrated, and it was said that strangers came long distances to visit it. There were also legends afloat concerning the wealth of the Marsannes. But Julien, during all the hours that he had sat at his windows seeking to penetrate the mysteries of that enormous fortune, had never seen anything but the gray facade and the dark mass of the chestnut trees. Never had anyone mounted the steps, never had the moss-grown door opened. The Marsannes had ceased to use that door; they went in and out through an iron gate on Saint-Anne Street. There was, besides, at the end of a lane near the ramparts, a little gate opening into the garden, that Julien could not see. For him, the house remained dead, like a palace in a fairy story peopled by invisible inhabitants. One Sunday, in the square before the church, one of the post-office employees pointed out to Julien a tall old man and an old lady, telling him that they were the Marquis and Marquise de Marsanne. Then his companion informed him that they had a daughter still in the convent, Mademoiselle Therese de Marsanne; and that little Colombel, M. Savournin's clerk, was her foster-brother. As the old couple were about to turn into Saint-Anne Street, little Colombel approached, and the marquis held out his hand,--an honor he had not accorded anyone else. Julien suffered from that handshake; for this Colombel, a youth of twenty years, with sharp eyes and a mean mouth, had long been his enemy. He made fun of Julien's timidity; he had stirred up the laundry-girls of Beau-Soleil Street against him; and one evening, the two youths had come to blows on the ramparts, with the result that the notary's clerk retired with two black eyes.