Pedigree by Georges Simenon Page B

calm Élise, who was having a fit of crying which was degenerating into a fit of hysterics.
    â€˜I knew it. I felt it. She said it would happen before she even knew me!’
    The lamp started smoking. Désiré lowered the wick. At the same moment the stove gave its familiar ‘boom’, as if the guardian spirit of the house had felt that the time had come to make his benevolent presence felt.
    â€˜Hush!’ whispered Valérie, when Désiré went towards the bed.
    And she added in an undertone, while Élise was shaken by sob after sob:
    â€˜It does her good.’

CHAPTER THREE
    T WO o’clock. Two strokes which rang out sharply in the empty air, here first, then there, at Saint-Jean, at Saint-Jacques, at the Cathedral, at Saint-Denis, two strokes which sounded early or late over the sleeping town, in a sky in which the moon was swimming. The fried-fish shops were closed. The frosted-glass globe which served as the sign for a night-club no longer attracted anybody and the doorman was inside.
    An opening appeared in a wall in the Rue Gérardrie, in a tiny café, a door between two shutters, and somebody gently pushed Léopold outside. In the yellow lamplight a fat blonde waitress could be seen counting the stitches in her crochet-work, the door shut again, footsteps faded into the distance.
    God preserve him! And help him to find his way home through the maze of streets!
    It was a relief not to see him there any more, staring at his glass, all alone, bearded, unsociable, and so still that when a traveller who was teasing the waitress stopped when he became aware of Léopold’s presence, the girl motioned to him to take no notice.
    He had gone. There was the noise of a shop shutter which he bumped into, then his footsteps zigzagging from pavement to pavement.
    The town slept.
    Ã‰lise, lying motionless, had her eyes open, and her gaze remained fixed upon the alarm-clock beside the little flame of the night-light.
    Three minutes past two … Five minutes past two … The child did not move, Désiré was snoring, and she could feel him all warm beside her. She gave him a little push, and murmured, as if she were afraid of waking him:
    â€˜Désiré …’
    Why this humble voice, this apologetic expression, this air of being a poor bedridden woman who would have preferred to fend for herself? He opened his eyes, swung his long hairy legs out of the bed, scratched his feet, and put on the priest’s elastic-sided shoes which he used as slippers. (This was an idea of Élise’s. A priest had refused to buy the shoes he had ordered, and the cobbler had sold them off cheap. They were of such good quality!)
    They did not use the big lamp at night. At the slightest movement the flame of the night-light flickered and the shadow of the corner of the wardrobe started dancing on the ceiling.
    Désiré lit the spirit-stove to heat the feeding-bottle in a saucepan; then, feeling cold in his nightshirt, he put on his overcoat, the only one he possessed, a black one with a velvet collar. He remained standing by the window whose panes were covered with a thin film of frost which was still transparent, and Élise’s gaze said helplessly, silently:
    â€˜Dear God! Poor Désiré!’
    Now Désiré was enjoying himself. He scratched at the frost-flowers, just as he used to do when he was a child—this gave his fingernails an extraordinary feeling which was quite unlike any other—and he threw a satisfied glance at the lighted window on the other side of the street, exactly opposite him.
    It was probably the only lighted window in the whole district. It was at Torset et Mitouron’s, the wholesale ironmongers, dealers in stoves, pottery, rope and linoleum. Three floors of shops stuffed with merchandise and, on the second floor, in a little room where the buckets and brooms were stored, the night watchman. His window, like all the rest, was fitted