If you go on into the court you will
find as many more, some in billiard-room over absinthe and a match of
corks some without over a last cigar and a vermouth. The doves coo
and flutter from the dovecot; Hortense is drawing water from the
well; and as all the rooms open into the court, you can see the
white-capped cook over the furnace in the kitchen, and some idle
painter, who has stored his canvases and washed his brushes, jangling
a waltz on the crazy, tongue-tied piano in the salle-a-manger.
'EDMOND, ENCORE UN VERMOUTH,' cries a man in velveteen, adding in a
tone of apologetic afterthought, 'UN DOUBLE, S'IL VOUS PLAIT.'
'Where are you working?' asks one in pure white linen from top to
toe. 'At the Carrefour de l'Epine,' returns the other in corduroy
(they are all gaitered, by the way). 'I couldn't do a thing to it.
I ran out of white. Where were you?' 'I wasn't working. I was
looking for motives.' Here is an outbreak of jubilation, and a lot
of men clustering together about some new-comer with outstretched
hands; perhaps the 'correspondence' has come in and brought So-and-so
from Paris, or perhaps it is only So-and-so who has walked over from
Chailly to dinner.
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