Whenever one of the omnibuses lumbered away on its journey, she followed it with her eyes, as a government clerk at Cayenne or Noumea gazes after the steamer about to return to France; she made the trip with it, knew just where it would stop, at what point it would lurch around a corner, grazing the shop-windows with its wheels.
As a prisoner, M.Chebe became a terrible trial.

He could not work in the garden.

On Sundays the fortifications were deserted; he could no longer strut about among the workingmen's families dining on the grass, and pass from group to group in a neighborly way, his feet encased in embroidered slippers, with the authoritative demeanor of a wealthy landowner of the vicinity.

This he missed more than anything else, consumed as he was by the desire to make people think about him.

So that, having nothing to do, having no one to pose before, no one to listen to his schemes, his stories, the anecdote of the accident to the Duc d'Orleans--a similar accident had happened to him in his youth, you remember--the unfortunate Ferdinand overwhelmed his wife with reproaches.
"Your daughter banishes us--your daughter is ashamed of us!" She heard nothing but that "Your daughter--your daughter--your daughter!" For, in his anger with Sidonie, he denied her, throwing upon his wife the whole responsibility for that monstrous and unnatural child.