(Margat was storming against the local grocer, the only one of his kind, the inevitable and implacable robber of his customers.) The framework of the house was laid bare, it was full of light and plaster, and it trembled like a steamboat.

We climbed to the drawing-room of this house which had breathed forth all its mystery and was worse than empty.

The room still showed remains of luxury and elegance--a disemboweled piano with clusters of protruding strings; a cupboard, dislodged and rotting, as though disinterred; a white-powdered floor, sown with golden stripes and rumpled books, and with fragile debris which cried out when we trod on it.

Across the window, which was framed in broken glass, a curtain hung by one corner and fluttered like a bat.

Over the sundered fireplace, only a mirror was intact and unsullied, upright in its frame.
Then, become suddenly and profoundly like each other, we were both fascinated by the virginity of that long glass.