Jack went to and fro from the manufactory alone. He was in haste to reach his lodgings, to throw aside his workman’s blouse, and to bury himself in his books. Surrounded with these, many of them those he had used at school, he commenced the labors of the evening, and was astonished to find with what facility he regained all that he thought he had forever lost. Sometimes, however, he encountered an unexpected difficulty, and it was touching to see the young man, whose hands were distorted and clumsy from handling heavy weights, sometimes throw aside his pen in despair. At his side Bélisaire sat sewing the straw of his summer hats, in respectful silence, the stupefaction of a savage assistant at a magician’s incantations. He frowned when Jack frowned, grew impatient, and when his comrade came to the end of some difficult passage, nodded his head with an air of triumph. The noise of the pedler’s big needle passing through the stiff straw, the student’s pen scratching upon the paper, the gigantic dictionaries hastily taken up and thrown down, filled the attic with a quiet and healthy atmosphere; and when Jack raised his eyes he saw from the windows the light of other lamps, and other shadows courageously prolonging their labors into the middle of the night. After her child was asleep, Madame Weber, to economize coal and oil, brought her work to the room of her friend; she sowed in silence. It had been decided that they should not marry until spring, the winter to the poor being always a season of anxiety and privation. Jack, as he wrote, thought, “How happy they are.” His own happiness came on Sundays. Never did any coquette take such pains with her toilette as did Jack on those days, for he was determined that nothing about him should remind Cécile of his daily toil; well might he have been taken for Prince Rodolphe had he been seen as he started off. Delicious day! without hours or minutes—a day of uninterrupted felicity. The whole house greeted him warmly, a bright fire burned in the salon, flowers bloomed at the windows, and Cécile and the doctor made him feel how dear he was to them both. After they had dined, M. Rivals examined the work of the week, corrected everything, and explained all that had puzzled the youth.