CHAPTER ONE
Madame Bathilde Chalumeau, her black cotton frock tucked up round her plump figure over her scarlet-flannel petticoat, was dusting the windows of her shop in the Rue Dessous l'Arche.
It was only six o'clock and the air as yet was cool, but the trees leaning over the wall of Avocat Millot's garden opposite were grey with dust and parched with the heat of an exceptionally warm September.
Madame Chalumeau, who was standing on a chair energetically flopping her feather-brush over the panes of her double shop-front, sighed as she looked up at the brilliant sky. "It is to be a heat of the devil," she thought.
Next door to her, chez Bouillard, nothing was stirring. Poor Désiré, being a widower, was apt to oversleep himself, and it was bad for his trade. Even now a small child in a black smock stood at his door, waiting to fill his carafe with the black wine that had stained its sides to such a beautiful violet hue.
"Bonjour, Christophe——"
"Bonjour, madame."
"You want wine?"
"Oui, madame."