He talked baby-talk to him, prophesied that this youngster would be taller than himself, slipped in some implied flattery of his son, young Hulot, and returned the child to the stout Norman woman in charge of him. And Célestine exchanged a look with the Baroness that said: ‘What an adorable man!’ It goes without saying that she stood up for her father-in-law against her own father’s attacks on him.

Having shown himself an agreeable father-in-law and a doting grandpapa, the Baron took his son aside into the garden in order to offer some very practical observations about the line to follow on a ticklish issue that had arisen in the Chamber that morning. The young lawyer was filled with admiration by the profundity of his views, and touched by his friendly tone, especially by the note almost of deference which seemed to show a desire, nowadays, to treat his son as his equal.

The younger Hulot was a perfect type of the kind of young man produced by the 1830 revolution; with a mind absorbed in politics, taking his ambitions very seriously and containing them behind a solemn mask, very envious of established reputations, uttering sententious phrases instead of the incisive sallies that are the diamonds of French conversation, but with a self-possessed correctness, mistaking arrogance for dignity. Such men are walking coffins containing the Frenchman of an older France. This Frenchman stirs at times and kicks out against his English envelope, but ambition checks him and he consents to stifle in it. These coffins always go draped in black cloth.

‘Ah! here is my brother!’ said Baron Hulot, going forward to welcome the Count at the drawing-room door.

He greeted the probable successor of the late Marshal Montcornet warmly, then took his arm and led him into the room with every mark of affection and respect.

This Peer of France, who was excused from sittings of the Chamber by reason of his deafness, had a fine head, frosted by the years, whose grey thatch was still thick enough to show a mark left by the pressure of his hat. Small and stocky and grown lean, he wore his green old age with a sprightly gaiety; and as he preserved an exceedingly active spirit, condemned to idleness, he divided his time between reading and walking. His kind and gentle approach to life was reflected in his pale face, his bearing and his tactful conversation, which was full of good sense. He never talked war or campaigns; he knew himself too great to need a show of greatness. In a drawing-room he confined the part he played to a constant attentiveness to the ladies’ wishes.

‘You are all very gay,’ he said, seeing the animation that the Baron had infused into this little family gathering. ‘Hortense has still to be married, however,’ he added, noting traces of melancholy on his sister-in-law’s face.

‘Time enough for that!’ Bette shouted in his ear, in a formidable voice.

‘That’s what you say, you bad seed that refused to flower!’ he replied, laughing.

The hero of Forzheim was fond of Cousin Bette, for they had a certain amount in common. He was a man without education, sprung from the people; his courage alone had carved out his military achievement, and his practical good sense took the place of brilliance. Full of honours, his hands immaculate, he was ending his fine life radiantly, surrounded by this family in which all his affections were centred, with no suspicion of his brother’s still secret aberrations. No one enjoyed more than he did the pleasant sight presented by the meetings of this family group, among whom no slightest discord ever arose, and brothers and sisters were equally affectionate, for Célestine had been immediately accepted as one of the family. Indeed, the kind little Comte Hulot habitually inquired from time to time why old Crevel was not there. ‘My father is in the country!’ Célestine would shout. On this occasion they told him that the retired perfumer was on a journey.

Surrounded by this truly united family group, Madame Hulot said to herself: ‘This is the surest kind of happiness, and who, indeed, could take it from us?’

Seeing the Baron so attentive to his favourite, Adeline, the General teased him so much about his preference that the Baron, afraid of appearing ridiculous, transferred his gallantry to his daughter-in-law, whom he always singled out for flattery and attention at these family dinners, for he was hoping through her to bring old Crevel round and induce him to get over his resentment. Any witness of the family scene would have found it hard to believe that ruin was staring the father in the face, the mother was in despair, the son to the last degree uneasy about his father’s future, and the daughter busy planning to steal a sweetheart from her cousin.

At seven o’clock, seeing his brother, his son, the Baroness, and Hortense absorbed in their game of whist, the Baron left to go and applaud his mistress at the Opera, taking Cousin Bette away with him. She lived in the rue du Doyenné, and was accustomed to make the loneliness of that desolate quarter a pretext for always leaving soon after dinner. Any Parisian will acknowledge that the old maid’s precaution was sensible enough.

The continued existence of the conglomeration of houses running the length of the old Louvre is one of those reassuring defiances of common sense by which the French fondly hope to persuade Europe that Frenchmen have not much intelligence and are not to be feared. We have here, perhaps, hit upon an important principle of international strategy. It will not, certainly, be supererogatory to describe this corner of present-day Paris. Later, it will be unimaginable; and our nephews, who will no doubt see the Louvre completed, will refuse to believe that such an outrageous eyesore should have existed for thirty-six years, in the heart of Paris, facing the palace where during the same thirty-six years three dynasties have received the élite of France and Europe.

Beyond the archway leading from the pont du Carrousel to the rue du Musée, anyone visiting Paris, even for a few days, is bound to notice a number of houses with decayed façades, whose discouraged owners do no maintenance work upon them. These are all that remains of an old quarter, in process of demolition since the day when Napoleon decided to complete the Louvre. The rue du Doyenné and the blind alley of the same name are the only passages that penetrate this sombre and deserted block, inhabited presumably by ghosts, for one never catches sight of anyone here. The footway, standing much lower than the pavement of the rue du Musée, comes out on a level with the rue Froidmanteau. These houses, submerged and darkened by the raising of the Square, also lie wrapped in the perpetual shadow cast by the high galleries of the Louvre, blackened on this side by the north wind. The gloom, the silence, the glacial air, the hollow sunken ground level, combine to make these houses seem so many crypts, or living tombs. If, passing in a cab through this dead area, one happens to glance down the impasse du Doyenné, a chill strikes one’s heart, one wonders who can possibly live here and what may happen here at night, at the hour when the alley becomes a place of cut-throats, when the vices of Paris, shrouded in night’s mantle, move as they will.

The problem the area presents, alarming enough already, becomes frightening when one sees that these so-called dwellings are bounded by a swamp on the rue de Richelieu side, a sea of jostling broken paving-stones towards the Tuileries, small plots and sinister hovels facing the galleries, and steppes of dressed stone and half-demolished ruins by the old Louvre. Henri III and his minions looking for their breeches, Marguerite’s lovers in search of their heads, must dance sarabands by moonlight in these barren wastes, dominated by the vault of a chapel still standing, as if to demonstrate that the Catholic religion, so tenacious in France, outlasts everything.