He again relapsed into silence, his eyes ardently fixed on the city, where the shadows were gathering deeper and deeper. He was probably interrogating that too distant future which escaped him. Then night enveloped all, the city became lost in a confused mass, one could hear it breathing plentifully, like some sea, the crest of the pale waves of which is all the eye can distinguish. Here and there, a few walls still preserved a whitish hue; and the yellow flames of the gas-jets pierced the gloom one by one, similar to stars shining amidst the darkness of a stormy sky. Angèle shook off her feeling of uneasiness and continued the jest her husband had commenced at dessert. "Ah! well," said she with a smile, "there's been a good shower of those twenty-franc pieces! The Parisians are counting them now. Look at the fine piles they're making at our feet!" She pointed to the streets which descend from the Buttes Montmartre, with their double rows of lighted gas-lamps looking like piles of gold. "And over there," cried she, indicating a galaxy of lights, "that is surely the treasury!" The remark made Saccard laugh. They remained a few minutes longer at the window, delighted with this flood of "twenty-franc pieces," which was ending by covering the whole of Paris. On returning from Montmartre, the civil servant no doubt regretted having gossiped so much. He put it down to the Burgundy, and requested his wife not to repeat the "nonsense" he had been saying; he wished, said he, to be considered a serious person. For a long time past, Saccard had been studying these three lines of streets and Boulevards, the pretty correct plan of which he had so far forgotten himself as to place before Angèle. When the latter died, he in nowise regretted that she carried with her into the tomb the recollection of all he had said up on the Buttes Montmartre. It was there that his fortune lay, in those famous gaps which his hand had, so to say, opened in the very heart of Paris, and he had made up his mind to share his idea with no one, knowing well enough that on the day of the sharing of the spoil there would be plenty of crows hovering over the gutted city.