Jacques smoked tobacco on which he used to sprinkle a few drops of laudanum, and he would smoke until the cloud of smoke from his pipe became thick enough to veil from him all the objects in his little room, and, above all, a pistol hanging on the wall.

It was a matter of half a score pipes.

By the time the pistol was wholly invisible it almost always happened that the smoke and the laudanum combined would send Jacques off to sleep, and it also often happened that his sadness left him at the commencement of his dreams.
But on this particular evening he had used up all his tobacco; the pistol was completely hidden, and yet Jacques was still bitterly sad.
That evening, on the contrary Mademoiselle Francine was extremely light-hearted when she came home, and like Jacques' sadness, her light-heartedness was without cause.

It was one of those joys that come from heaven, and that God scatters amongst good hearts.

So Mademoiselle Francine was in a good temper, and sang to herself as she came upstairs.
But as she was going to open her door a puff of wind, coming through the open staircase window, suddenly blew out her candle.
"Oh, what a nuisance!" exclaimed the girl, "six flights of stairs to go down and up again." But, noticing the light coming from under Jacques' door, the instinct of idleness grafted on a feeling of curiosity, advised her to go and ask the artist for a light.