Then, approaching the window, she glanced at the adjacent Place des Capucins. The little house was built at a corner of that square and the Rue de l'Église. On its ground floor, to the right and the left of the central passage, were the dining and drawing rooms, and in the rear came the kitchen and the scullery, which looked into a dark and mouldy yard. Then, on the first floor, on the right hand were two rooms set apart for Madame Duparque, and, on the left, two others occupied by Madame Berthereau; whilst under the tiles, in front of Pélagie's bed-chamber and some store places, were two more little rooms, which had been furnished for Geneviève during her girlhood, and of which she gaily resumed possession whenever she now came to Maillebois with her husband. But how dark was the gloom, how heavy the silence, how tomblike the chill which fell from the dim ceilings! The Rue de l'Église, starting from the apse of the parish church of St. Martin, was too narrow for vehicular traffic; twilight reigned there even at noontide; the house-fronts were leprous, the little paving-stones were mossy, the atmosphere stank of slops. And on the northern side the Place des Capucins spread out treeless, but darkened by the lofty front of an old convent, which had been divided between the Capuchins, who there had a large and handsome chapel, and the Brothers of the Christian Schools, who had installed a very prosperous educational establishment in some of the conventual dependencies. Madame Duparque remained for a moment in contemplation of that deserted space, across which flitted merely the shadowy figures of the devout; its priestly quietude being enlivened at intervals only by the children attending the Brothers' school. A bell rang slowly in the lifeless air, and the old lady was turning round impatiently, when the door of the room opened and Geneviève came in. 'At last!' the grandmother exclaimed. 'We must breakfast quickly: the first bell is ringing.' Fair, tall, and slender, with splendid hair, and a face all life and gaiety inherited from her father, Geneviève, childlike still, though two and twenty, was laughing with a laugh which showed all her white teeth. But Madame Duparque, on perceiving that she was alone, began to protest: 'What! is not Marc ready?' 'He's following me, grandmother; he is coming down with Louise.' Then, after kissing her silent mother, Geneviève gave expression to the amusement she felt at finding herself once more, as a married woman, in the quiet home of her youth. Ah! she knew each paving-stone of that Place des Capucins; she found old friends in the smallest tufts of weeds. And by way of evincing amiability and gaining time, she was going into raptures over the scene she viewed from the window, when all at once, on seeing two black figures pass, she recognised them. 'Why, there are Father Philibin and Brother Fulgence!' she said. 'Where can they be going at this early hour?'