At the outset, the serenity of this contemplative hour was seriously impaired by the creaking of derrick-pulleys and the loud chatter of wagon-drivers, and hardly less so by the eager questions of Marcelle, clinging to his hand, her eyes bright with excitement, as she looked out with him across Paris, or peered down into the vast pit when the masons were laying the foundations of the big church. But, bit by bit, Papa Labesse became accustomed to the new conditions; and every night, an hour before sunset, his high, dry voice summoned Marcelle from the dairy across the way, and the two set forth together up the long curving incline of the rue Lepic, and the old man would smoke his pipe by the low wattled fence at the brink of the bluff, while the child babbled of her little affairs. Papa Labesse no longer named the domes and spires now. His eyes rested alternately on the city and on the girl beside him, and often, when Marcelle was silent, looking off to where the thin, silver line of the Seine gleamed briefly between distant buildings, he shook his head several times, tapping the side of his inverted pipe-bowl against the palm of his hand, long after the ashes had fallen out. When Marcelle was seventeen, Madame Clapot died suddenly, and the girl moved from the rue Veron to the home of her aunt, near by, in the rue Seveste. But the change made no difference in her friendship for Papa Labesse. All through the ensuing spring she called regularly for him each afternoon, and they climbed the Butte in company, as before. The old man would have been completely happy had it not been for Bombiste Fremier. Bombiste was an employé of the state,--an humble one, to be sure, but, nevertheless, part and parcel of the great Administration which includes every one, from the President of the Republic to the street-sweeper on the rue Royale. In Fremier's case the employment was brief and not over-lucrative. He was engaged, for two months only in the twelve, to mow the grass on the fortifications and in parts of the Bois and the smaller parks of Paris. For the remainder of the year he lived none knew how, but he had always a few white pieces in his pocket, and was ready to treat a comrade at Le Cheval Blanc, the little wine-shop kept by Bonhomme Pirou at the corner of the boulevard and the rue Seveste. As regards the source of his income, it is probable that Amélie Chouert, called La Trompette, by reason of her loud voice, might have divulged some remarkable particulars. In any event, she was his constant companion, a sharp-featured, angular woman with snapping black eyes and a great mop of hair that came down to within an inch of her continuous line of eyebrow.