"I spent five years in there," muttered he. "My means were small in those times, but no matter, I was young. You see the cupboard; it was there that I put by three hundred francs, copper by copper. And the hole for the stove-pipe, I can still remember the day when I made it. The room had no fire-place, and it was bitter cold, all the more so as we were not often two together."
"Come, come," interrupted the doctor, joking, "we don't ask you for your secrets. You played your games like every one else."
"That's true," naively resumed the worthy man. "I still remember an ironing girl who lived over the way. You see the bed was over there, on the right hand side near the window. Ah! my poor room, how they've knocked it about."
He was really very sad.
"Come," said Saccard, "no harm's done by throwing those old cabins down. Handsome houses in freestone will be built in place of them. Would you still live in such a den while you might very well lodge yourself on the new Boulevard?"
"That's true," again replied the manufacturer, who seemed quite consoled.
The commission of inquiry halted again at the two other houses. The doctor remained at the door smoking and looking at the sky. When they reached the Rue des Amandiers the houses became fewer; they now passed through large inclosures and over uncultivated land, where some half fallen buildings straggled. Saccard seemed delighted with this promenade through ruins. He had just remembered the dinner he had once shared with his first wife on the heights of Montmartre, and he well recollected having indicated with his hand the cut across Paris from the Place du Château-d'Eau to the Barrière du Trône. The realisation of this far distant prediction delighted him. He followed the cut, with the secret joys of authorship, as if he himself had with his iron fingers struck the first blows with a pickaxe. And he jumped over the puddles, reflecting that three millions awaited him under building materials, at the end of this river of greasy filth.
Meanwhile the gentlemen fancied themselves in the country. The road passed through some gardens, the walls of which had been felled. There were large clumps of budding lilac, with foliage of a very delicate light green. Each of these gardens, looking like a retreat hung with the leaves of the shrubs, displayed a narrow basin or a miniature cascade, with bits of wall on which to deceive the eye, arbours, in perspective and bluish landscape backgrounds had been painted. The buildings, scattered and discreetly hidden, resembled Italian pavilions and Grecian temples, and moss was wearing away the feet of the plaster columns, whilst weeds had loosened the mortar of the pediments.
"Those are petites maisons," said the doctor, with a wink.
But as he saw that the gentlemen did not understand what he meant, he explained that under Louis XV. the nobility had retreats of this kind for their pleasure parties. It was then the fashion. And he added: