Since autumn, the sculptor had been living at Montmartre,
in a small studio in the Rue des Tilleuls. He had moved thither in
consequence of a series of affairs that had quite upset him. First of
all, he had been turned out of the fruiterer's shop in the Rue du
Cherche-Midi for not paying his rent; then had come a definite rupture
with Chaine, who, despairing of being able to live by his brush, had
rushed into commercial enterprise, betaking himself to all the fairs
around Paris as the manager of a kind of 'fortune's wheel' belonging
to a widow; while last of all had come the sudden flight of Mathilde,
her herbalist's business sold up, and she herself disappearing, it
seemed, with some mysterious admirer. At present Mahoudeau lived all
by himself in greater misery than ever, only eating when he secured a
job at scraping some architectural ornaments, or preparing work for
some more prosperous fellow-sculptor.
'I am going to fetch him, do you hear?' Claude repeated to Christine.
'We still have a couple of hours before us.
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