Paul Vence had obtained from the administration a promise to buy it for the Louvre, but the good widow would not part with it.

It seemed to her that if she lost that warrior with his green bronze helmet she would lose the name that she wore worthily, and would cease to be the widow of Louis Marmet of the Academie des Inscriptions.
"Do not be afraid, Madame; a comet will not soon strike the earth.

Such a phenomenon is very improbable." Madame Martin replied that she knew no serious reason why the earth and humanity should not be annihilated at once.
Old Lagrange exclaimed with profound sincerity that he hoped the cataclysm would come as late as possible.
She looked at him.

His bald head could boast only a few hairs dyed black.

His eyelids fell like rags over eyes still smiling; his cheeks hung in loose folds, and one divined that his body was equally withered.
She thought, "And even he likes life!" Madame Marmet hoped, too, that the end of the world was not near at hand.
"Monsieur Lagrange," said Madame Martin, "you live, do you not, in a pretty little house, the windows of which overlook the Botanical Gardens?
It seems to me it must be a joy to live in that garden, which makes me think of the Noah's Ark of my infancy, and of the terrestrial paradises in the old Bibles." But he was not at all charmed with his house.