While they talked they left behind them the noisy streets of the centre
of Paris. They walked along the quays, skirted the Jardin des Plantes,
plunged into Faubourg Saint-Marceau. Risler followed where the other
led. Sigismond's words did him so much good!

In due time they came to the Bievre, bordered at that point with
tanneries whose tall drying-houses with open sides were outlined in blue
against the sky; and then the ill-defined plains of Montsouris, vast
tracts of land scorched and stripped of vegetation by the fiery breath
that Paris exhales around its daily toil, like a monstrous dragon, whose
breath of flame and smoke suffers no vegetation within its range.

From Montsouris to the fortifications of Montrouge is but a step. When
they had reached that point, Planus had no great difficulty in taking his
friend home with him. He thought, and justly, that his tranquil
fireside, the spectacle of a placid, fraternal, devoted affection, would
give the wretched man's heart a sort of foretaste of the happiness that
was in store for him with his brother Frantz. And, in truth, the charm
of the little household began to work as soon as they arrived.

"Yes, yes, you are right, old fellow," said Risler, pacing the floor of
the living-room, "I mustn't think of that woman any more. She's like a
dead woman to me now. I have nobody left in the world but my little
Frantz; I don't know yet whether I shall send for him to come home, or go
out and join him; the one thing that is certain is that we are going to
stay together. Ah! I longed so to have a son! Now I have found one.
I want no other. When I think that for a moment I had an idea of killing
myself! Nonsense! it would make Madame What-d'ye-call-her, yonder, too
happy. On the contrary, I mean to live--to live with my Frantz, and for