CHAPTER xxii

AUTUMN; the artists returning to Paris with their
X\comet, their models, their wives and their easels.
Saint Loup busy with its numerous activities but
gradually ridding itself of strangers. The Cure
labouring his wearisome sermons which tended to
lengthen as the weather grew cooler; Jan working
strenuously at his Latin to the satisfaction and pride
of his tutor; Madame Roustan painstakingly looking
for sins — her own but also those of her neighbours;
Mere Melanie abstaining on Fridays from meat but
not always from her little violinist; Eusebe trying to
catch up with lost time by drinking less wine and
stitching more sandals; Goundran fishing, looking
after his prosperous affairs, making love to his wife
and playing with his baby, Marie more anxious
than ever about Loup who had recently developed
palpitations; the chemist part-paid and part-pacified;
the doctor unpaid, but so kindly a man that he was
fast becoming as poor as his patients; Jouse still
silent; Anfos still scared, and Christophe growing
more and more stupid at school, oppressed by a sense
of approaching disaster. Thus the autumn gradually
passed into winter.
The winter found Anatole Kahn well content, his
venture having more than justified his judgment The
profits were unexpectedly large — there seemed little
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