“I do not care and yet I do care. Well! yes, I am becoming like that. You will see, you will see, my friend: when you have lived a little longer, you will do as every one else.” And he spoke of his forty-two years, of the emptiness of life, posing for being very melancholy, which his robust health belied. In the artist’s head which he had fashioned for himself, with flowing hair and beard trimmed in the Henri IV. style, one found the flat skull and square jaw of a middle-class man of limited intelligence and voracious appetites. When younger, he had a fatiguing gaiety. Octave’s eyes became fixed on a number of the “Gazette de France,” which was lying amongst some plans. Then, Campardon, more and more ill at ease, rang for the maid to know if madame was at length disengaged. Yes, the doctor was just leaving, madame would be there directly. “Is Madame Campardon unwell?” asked the young man. “No, she is the same as usual,” said the architect in a bored tone of voice. “Ah! and what is the matter with her?” Again embarrassed, he did not give a straightforward answer. “You know, there is always something going wrong with women. She has been in this state for the last thirteen years, ever since her confinement. Otherwise, she is as well as can be. You will even find her stouter.” Octave asked no further questions. Just then, Lisa returned, bringing a card; and the architect, begging to be excused, hastened to the drawing-room, telling the young man as he disappeared to talk to his wife and have patience. Octave had caught sight, on the door being quickly opened and closed, of the black mass of a cassock in the centre of the large white and gold apartment. At the same moment, Madame Campardon entered from the ante-room. He scarcely knew her again. In other days, when a youngster, he had known her at Plassans, at her father’s, Monsieur Domergue, government clerk of the works, she was thin and ugly, as puny-looking as a young girl suffering from the crisis of her puberty; and now he beheld her plump, with the clear and placid complexion of a nun, soft eyes, dimples, and a general appearance of an overfed she-cat. If she had not been able to grow pretty, she had ripened towards thirty, gaining a sweet savour and a nice fresh odour of autumn fruit. He remarked, however, that she walked with difficulty, her whole body wrapped, in a mignonette coloured silk dressing-gown, moving; which gave her a languid air. “But you are a man, now!” said she gaily, holding out her hands. “How you have grown, since our last journey to the country!” And she gazed at him: tall, dark, handsome, with his well kept moustache and beard. When he told her his age, twenty-two, she scarcely believed it: he looked twenty-five at least. He, whom the presence of a woman, even though she were the lowest of servants, filled with rapture, laughed melodiously, enveloping her with his eyes of the colour of old gold, and of the softness of velvet.