Repelled by the world of fact, her soul, in its soreness and immaturity, tried to take refuge in poetry. At sixteen, she wore two drooping ringlets on each side of her sallow face, and her dreamy blue eyes looked out their astonishment beside the blackness of her hair. Her toneless voice was not ungentle; she read verses and made strenuous efforts to write them. She considered everything that helped her to escape from life, poetical. Two young men, who since their early childhood had been friends and partners in affection, used to frequent Madame Semène’s evening parties. One, weedy without being tall, scraggy rather than thin, with hair that was not so much fair as faded, with an aggressive nose and timid eyes, was Amédée Fleurissoire. The other was fat and stumpy, with stiff black hair growing low on his forehead, and the odd habit of holding his head on one side, his mouth open and his right hand stretched out in front of him: such is the portrait of Gaston Blafaphas. Amédée was the son of a stonecutter with a business in tombstones and funeral wreaths; Gaston’s father had an important chemist’s shop. (However strange the name of Blafaphas may seem, it is very common in the villages of the lower slopes of the Pyrenees, though it is sometimes spelt in slightly different ways. Thus, for instance, in the single small town of Sta ..., where the writer of these lines was once called on some business connected with an examination, he saw a notary Blaphaphas, a hairdresser Blafafaz, and a pork-butcher Blaphaface, who, on being questioned, disclaimed any common origin, while each one of them expressed considerable contempt for the name of the other two and its inelegant orthography.--But these philological remarks will be of interest only to a somewhat restricted class of reader.) What would Fleurissoire and Blafaphas have been without each other? It is hard to imagine such a thing. At school, during their recreation time they were continually together; constantly teased and tormented by the other boys, they gave each other patience, comfort and support. They were nicknamed the Blafafoires. To each of them their friendship seemed the ark of salvation--the single oasis in life’s pitiless desert. Neither of them tasted a joy that he did not immediately wish to share with the other--or, to speak more truly, there were no joys for either of them save those which could be tasted together.