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good. You’re trembling all over.’
    â€˜You think I ought to?’
    Valérie chose a cake and, somewhat embarrassed, asked for a glass of port. She thought it incumbent upon her to explain:
    â€˜It’s for my friend, who…’
    â€˜Dear God, Valérie!’
    At six o’clock Désiré left his office in the Rue des Guillemins and set off with his long, regular stride.
    â€˜He has such a fine way of walking!’
    He did not turn round, did not stop to look at the shop windows. He walked along, smoking his cigarette, looking straight ahead; he walked along as if a military band were accompanying him. His itinerary never varied. He always arrived at the same time, to a minute, in front of the pneumatic clocks, and at precisely the same spot he lit his second cigarette.
    He knew nothing of what had happened in the Place Saint-Lambert, and he was surprised to see four trams following one another. Probably there had been an accident…
    At twenty-five, he had never known any other woman but Élise. Before he met her, he used to spend his evenings in a church club. He was the prompter in the dramatic society.
    Walking along, he came to the Rue Léopold by way of the Rue de la Cathédrale, went into the passage on the ground floor, looked up, and saw wet patches on the steps, as if several people had gone that way.
    Then he rushed upstairs. When he got to the first floor, he could hear a murmur of voices. The door opened before he touched the handle. Valérie’s frightened little face appeared, a round face with the hair and eyelashes of a Japanese doll and two red spots on the cheekbones.
    â€˜It’s you, Désiré … Hush … Élise…’
    He wanted to go in. He went into the kitchen but the midwife stopped him.
    â€˜Whatever happens, I’m having no men in here … Go and wait outside… We’ll call you when you can come in …’
    And he heard Élise sighing in the bedroom:
    â€˜Dear God, Madame Béguin, it’s Désiré already! … Where is he going to eat?’
    â€˜What! You haven’t gone yet? … I tell you we’ll call you … Look … I’ll wave the lamp at the window…’
    He did not notice that he had left his hat on a corner of the untidy table. His long black overcoat buttoned up almost to the collar and gave him a solemn look. He had the little brown beard of a musketeer.
    Now the street was empty, with just a thin drizzle to give it a touch of life. The shop-windows had disappeared one after another behind their iron curtains. The men with frozen noses who distributed coloured prospectuses at the doors of the dress shops had vanished into the darkness. The trams were rarer and made more din; the monotonous noise that could be distinguished in the background was that of the muddy waves of the Meuse breaking against the piers of the Pont des Arches.
    In the narrow streets all around, there were plenty of little cafés with frosted-glass windows and cream curtains, but Désiré never set foot in a café except on Sunday morning, at eleven o’clock, and then always at the Renaissance.
    He was already scanning the windows inquiringly. He did not think about eating. He kept taking his watch out of his pocket and now and then he would start talking to himself.
    At ten o’clock, he was the only person left on the pavement. He had scarcely so much as frowned on seeing some gendarmes’ helmets over in the direction of the Place Saint-Lambert.
    Twice he had climbed the stairs, and strained his ears to catch some noise; twice he had fled, frightened, sick at heart.
    â€˜Excuse me …’
    The policeman at the corner of the street, standing underneath a big dummy clock with its hands fixed, had nothing to do.
    â€˜Could you tell me the right time?’
    Then with a strained, apologetic smile:
    â€˜Time seems to go so slowly when one’s waiting … when