"Where is that village?"
"Le Roule?—It's a pretty village, just after you leave Paris by Porte Saint-Honoré.—There's a leper's hospital there."
"A leper's hospital! Thanks! What an attraction! Do you propose that we go for diversion to a leper's hospital?"
"Why, no; you don't let me finish. I said that to show you that I know the locality. There is also a certain pêcheur-rotisseur, who serves stewed rabbit and fried fish. We shall be very comfortable there, and we can regale ourselves at our ease."
"So be it! let us go there; lead the way."
"Try not to waver so on your legs."
"Isn't he delicious!—when it is he who stumbles at every step."
The two clerks, each supporting the other, and sometimes describing zigzags which terrified the passers-by, set out for Le Roule, which was then only a village, although destined to become one of the great faubourgs of Paris.
XXXIV
A BOLD STEP
Since Bathilde had learned the result of Ambroisine's visit to Léodgard, since she had learned in what way he had treated the person who went to implore him in her behalf, a profound melancholy, a gloomy resignation, had succeeded the impatience, the anxiety, the hope, which had divided the empire of her mind at first.