week. After a while he came accompanied by his son Olivier, a great
fellow of thirty, dry and thin, who had married a very little woman,
slow and sickly. This Olivier held the post of head clerk in the section
of order and security at the Prefecture of Police, worth 3,000 francs a
year, which made Camille feel particularly jealous. From the first day
he made his appearance, Therese detested this cold, rigid individual,
who imagined he honoured the shop in the arcade by making a display of
his great shrivelled-up frame, and the exhausted condition of his poor
little wife.

Camille introduced another guest, an old clerk at the Orleans Railway,
named Grivet, who had been twenty years in the service of the company,
where he now held the position of head clerk, and earned 2,100 francs
a year. It was he who gave out the work in the office where Camille had
found employment, and the latter showed him certain respect. Camille, in
his day dreams, had said to himself that Grivet would one day die,
and that he would perhaps take his place at the end of a decade or
so. Grivet was delighted at the welcome Madame Raquin gave him, and
he returned every week with perfect regularity. Six months later, his
Thursday visit had become, in his way of thinking, a duty: he went
to the Arcade of the Pont Neuf, just as he went every morning to his
office, that is to say mechanically, and with the instinct of a brute.

From this moment, the gatherings became charming. At seven o'clock
Madame Raquin lit the fire, set the lamp in the centre of the table,
placed a box of dominoes beside it, and wiped the tea service which was
in the sideboard. Precisely at eight o'clock old Michaud and Grivet met
before the shop, one coming from the Rue de Seine, and the other from
the Rue Mazarine. As soon as they entered, all the family went up to the
first floor. There, in the dining-room, they seated themselves round the