For three years, days followed days and resembled one another. Camille
did not once absent himself from his office. His mother and wife hardly
ever left the shop. Therese, residing in damp obscurity, in gloomy,
crushing silence, saw life expand before her in all its nakedness, each
night bringing the same cold couch, and each morn the same empty day.



CHAPTER IV

One day out of seven, on the Thursday evening, the Raquin family
received their friends. They lit a large lamp in the dining-room, and
put water on the fire to make tea. There was quite a set out. This
particular evening emerged in bold relief from the others. It had become
one of the customs of the family, who regarded it in the light of a
middle-class orgie full of giddy gaiety. They did not retire to rest
until eleven o'clock at night.

At Paris Madame Raquin had found one of her old friends, the commissary
of police Michaud, who had held a post at Vernon for twenty years,
lodging in the same house as the mercer. A narrow intimacy had thus been
established between them; then, when the widow had sold her business to
go and reside in the house beside the river, they had little by little
lost sight of one another. Michaud left the provinces a few months
later, and came to live peacefully in Paris, Rue de Seine, on his
pension of 1,500 francs. One rainy day, he met his old friend in the
Arcade of the Pont Neuf, and the same evening dined with the family.

The Thursday receptions began in this way: the former commissary of
police got into the habit of calling on the Raquins regularly once a