Léonard Astier, who was walking alone, heard Danjou’s remark as well as others, in spite of the warnings passed from mouth to mouth, ‘Take care--there he is.’ It signified to him the beginning of his fall in estimation, consequent on the general knowledge of his folly and the amusement of Paris. ‘Take my arm, my dear master!’ said Freydet, who had been carried to him by the strong impulse of affection. ‘Ah, my dear friend, how much good you do me!’ said the old man in a dull, broken voice. They walked on in silence for some time. The trees on the quay cast a tracery of shade upon the stones below; the sounds of the street and the river echoed in the joyous air. It was one of those days on which human wretchedness seems to have been reprieved. ‘Where are we going?’ asked Freydet. ‘Anywhere--except home,’ answered the elder man, who felt a child’s terror at the thought of the scene his wife would inflict on him at dinner. They dined together at the Point-du-Jour after walking a long time by the river. When poor Astier returned home very late the friendly words of his old pupil and the sweetness of the air had succeeded in restoring his peace of mind. He had got over his five hours in the stocks on the bench of the Eighth Chamber--five hours to endure with bound hands the insulting laughter of the crowd and the vitriol squirt of the counsel. ‘Laugh, apes, laugh! Posterity will judge!’ was the thought with which he consoled himself as he crossed the large courts of the Institute, wrapped in slumber, with unlighted windows and great dark foursquare holes right and left where the staircases came down. He felt his way upstairs and reached his study noiselessly like a thief. Since Paul’s marriage and his quarrel with his son he was in the habit of flinging himself down every night on a bed made up in the study, to escape the interminable midnight discussions in which the wife always comes off victorious, thanks to the never-failing support of her ‘nerves’, and the husband ends by giving way and promising everything for the sake of peace and permission to sleep. Sleep! Never had he so much felt the need of it as now, at the end of his long day of emotion and fatigue, and the darkness of his study as he entered seemed the beginning of rest--when in the angle of the window he dimly distinguished a human figure.