And the monotonous years continued their march, like the impassive rivers; there passed five; there passed ten, fifteen, even twenty. The freshness of the young girl without fortune finished little by little by fading away, useless and disdained; the mother took on some gray hairs; the old aunt became infirm, shaking her head, octogenarian in a faded armchair, forever seated at the same place, near the darkened window, her venerable profile cut out against the foliage of the court below that background of glazed wall where the blackish marbling accentuated itself in the form of a bird, traced by the sluggish gutters. In the presence of the wall, of the inexorable wall, they grew old all three. And the rose bushes, the shrubs, grew old, too, with the less ominous age of plants, with their airs of rejuvenation at each return of spring. "Oh! my daughters, my poor daughters," said the aunt continually in her broken voice that no longer finished the phrase, "provided I live long enough, even I." And her bony hand, with a movement of menace, indicated that oppressive thing of stone. * * * * * She had been dead a twelvemonth, leaving a dreadful void in that little salon of recluses, and they had wept over her as the most cherished of grandmothers, when at last the inheritance came, very upsetting, one day when they had ceased longer to think of it. The aged daughter--forty years struck now--found herself quite young in her joy at entering into possession of the returned fortune. They drove out the lodgers, you may be sure, they reestablished themselves as before; but by preference they kept themselves ordinarily in the little salon of the days of moderate means: in the first place it was now full of souvenirs, and then besides it was again taking on a sunny cheerfulness, since they were to throw down that imprisoning wall which was to-day no more than a vain scarecrow, so easy to destroy by touch of louis d'or. * * * * * It took place at last, that downfall of brick and mortar, longed for during twenty gloomy years. It took place in April, at the moment of the first balmy airs of the first long evenings. Very quickly it was accomplished, in the midst of the noise of falling stones, of singing workmen, in a cloud of plaster and of ancient dust.