A narrow intimacy had thus been
established between them; then, when the widow had sold her business to
go and reside in the house beside the river, they had little by little
lost sight of one another. Michaud left the provinces a few months
later, and came to live peacefully in Paris, Rue de Seine, on his
pension of 1,500 francs. One rainy day, he met his old friend in the
Arcade of the Pont Neuf, and the same evening dined with the family.
The Thursday receptions began in this way: the former commissary of
police got into the habit of calling on the Raquins regularly once a
week. After a while he came accompanied by his son Olivier, a great
fellow of thirty, dry and thin, who had married a very little woman,
slow and sickly. This Olivier held the post of head clerk in the section
of order and security at the Prefecture of Police, worth 3,000 francs a
year, which made Camille feel particularly jealous. From the first day
he made his appearance, Therese detested this cold, rigid individual,
who imagined he honoured the shop in the arcade by making a display of
his great shrivelled-up frame, and the exhausted condition of his poor
little wife.
Camille introduced another guest, an old clerk at the Orleans Railway,
named Grivet, who had been twenty years in the service of the company,
where he now held the position of head clerk, and earned 2,100 francs
a year.
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