On the day when Serge, now completely restored to health, entered the Seminary, Mouret remained at home alone with Désirée. He now frequently looked after her; for this big 'innocent' girl, who was nearly sixteen, might have fallen into the basin of the fountain or have set the house on fire with matches just like a child of six. When Marthe returned home, she found the doors open and the rooms empty. The house seemed quite deserted. She went on to the terrace, and there, at the end of one of the walks, she saw her husband playing with his daughter. He was sitting on the gravel, and with a little wooden scoop was gravely filling a cart which Désirée was pulling along with a piece of string.
'Gee up! gee up!' cried the girl.
'Wait a little,' said her father patiently, 'it is not full yet. As you are the horse, you must wait till the cart is full.'
Then she stamped her feet like an impatient horse, and, at last, not being able to stand still any longer, she set off with a loud burst of laughter. The cart fell over and lost its load. When she had dragged it round the garden, she came back to her father crying:
'Fill it again! Fill it again!'
Mouret loaded it again with the little scoop. For a moment Marthe remained upon the terrace watching them, full of uneasy emotion. The open doors, the sight of the man playing with the child, the empty deserted house all touched her with sadness, though she was not clearly conscious of the feelings at work in her. She went upstairs to take off her things, on hearing Rose, who also had just returned, exclaim from the terrace steps:
'Good gracious! how silly the master is!'
His friends, the retired traders with whom he took a turn or two every day on the promenade in the Cours Sauvaire, declared that he was a little 'touched.' During the last few months his hair had grizzled, he had begun to get shaky on his legs, and was no longer the biting jeerer, feared by the whole town. For a little time it was thought that he had been venturing upon some risky speculations and had been overcome by a heavy loss of money.
Madame Paloque, as she leaned over the window-rail of her dining-room which overlooked the Rue Balande, said every time she saw him, that he was certainly going to the bad. And if, a few moments later, she happened to catch sight of Abbé Faujas passing along the street, she took a delight in exclaiming—the more especially if she had visitors with her:
'Just look at his reverence the Curé! Isn't he growing sleek? If he eats out of the same dish as Mouret, he can leave him nothing but the bones.'