Dimanche; this was all the more difficult as I had never read _Don Juan._ However, instinct made up for ignorance. I gave Bamps a most cordial reception; I introduced him to my mother, to whom, fortunately, I had said a few words about this my first debt; I offered him refreshment, and I asked him to sit down, or, if he preferred so to do, to visit our estate. Under the circumstances, Bamps' choice was a foregone conclusion: he preferred to visit _our estate._ Now, what was this property of which the reader has already heard me speak, but which he will assuredly have forgotten? Our estate was the house of M. Harlay on which my mother had been paying a life-annuity for something like forty years; M. Harlay had died during my stay with Maître Lefèvre; but, just as though he had made a wager, he died on the anniversary of his birth, triumphantly terminating his ninetieth year!... Unfortunately, his death had not been much advantage to us. My mother had borrowed, on house and garden, almost as much as house and garden were worth; so that we were neither richer nor poorer by this inheritance; though, as there were certain duties to pay, I may venture to state we were poorer rather than richer. But Bamps knew none of these details. I therefore offered, as I have said, to take him over our estate. He accepted. I unchained Pryamus, and we set off. After going fifty yards, Pyramus left us to follow a butcher boy who went by with a piece of mutton on his shoulder. I give this detail, although, at first glance, it may appear very trivial; for it was not without influence upon my future. For what would have happened to me and to Bamps if this butcher boy, whose name was Valtat, had not passed by, and if Pyramus had not followed him? We went on our way, without thinking of Pyramus. Man jostles up against great events, every moment of his life, without seeing them and without being conscious of them. We soon arrived. M. Harlay's house, now our own, was situated in the place de la Fontaine, perhaps a couple of hundred steps from the house we lived in. I had taken the keys: I opened the doors, and we began by looking over the interior of the house. It was not so clean as to inspire great confidence: everything had grown old along with the worthy man who had just died in it, and who had taken great care not to undertake a single repair in it; "for," said he, "it will last as long as I shall." It had lasted as long as he had, true; but, all the same, it was time he died. If he had lingered on merely another year or two with the same intention in his head, he would have out-lasted the house. The inside of our poor property, then, afforded the most melancholy sight of complete neglect and dilapidation. The floors were broken through, the wall-papers torn off, the bricks broken. Bamps shook his head, and said, in his half Alsacian and half French dialect, "Ach! My vord! my vord! it is in a fery pad stade."