He knew this house very well. He gazed at it on each of his journeys, amid the roar and jolting of his engine. It haunted him, without him being able to understand why, save for a confused sensation that it had something to do with his existence. Each time he went up and down the line, he first of all experienced a sort of dread lest he should find it no longer there, then he felt a kind of uneasiness when he perceived it still in the same place. He had never seen either the doors or windows open. All he had learnt about it was that it belonged to President Grandmorin, and on this particular night he was beset by an irresistible desire to wander round about it, so as to ascertain something more.
Jacques remained a long time on the road, facing the iron railings. He stepped back, raised himself on his toes, endeavouring to form some idea of the place. The railway, in cutting through the garden, had only left a small plot enclosed by walls in front of the house; while behind was a rather large piece of ground, simply surrounded by a quickset hedge. The dwelling, with its distressful-looking appearance, had an air of lugubrious sadness in the red reflex of this fumy night; and Jacques was about to leave it, with a shiver running over his skin, when he noticed a hole in the hedge. The idea that it would be cowardly not to go in, made him push through. His heart was beating; but, immediately, as he passed beside a greenhouse in ruins, he stopped at the sight of something dark, in a heap at the door.
"What! Is that you?" he exclaimed, astonished, recognising Flore. "What are you doing here?"
She also started with surprise. Then she answered tranquilly:
"You can see; I'm taking cords. They have left a heap there, that are rotting, without being used by anybody, and as I am always in need of them, I run over and take them."
And, indeed, seated on the ground, with a stout pair of scissors in her hand, she was undoing the bits of cord, cutting the knots, when she failed to get them apart.
"Doesn't the owner come here any more, then?" inquired the young man.
She began laughing.
"Oh! since that affair of Louisette," she replied, "there's no fear of the President risking the tip of his nose at La Croix-de-Maufras. I can pick up his cords without fear."