Sometimes on a Sunday, when the weather was fine, Camille forced Thérèse to go out with him, for a walk in the Champs Elysees. The young woman would have preferred to remain in the damp obscurity of the arcade, for the exercise fatigued her, and it worried her to be on the arm of her husband, who dragged her along the pavement, stopping before the shop windows, expressing his astonishment, making reflections, and then falling into ridiculous spells of silence.

But Camille insisted on these Sunday outings, which gave him the satisfaction of showing off his wife. When he met a colleague,