Scarcely a year of widowhood and a lover already! Such a disregard of propriety seemed monstrous out of all reason.

And the scandal was heightened by Adelaide's strange choice.

At that time there dwelt at the end of the Impasse Saint-Mittre, in a hovel the back of which abutted on the Fouques' land, a man of bad repute, who was generally referred to as "that scoundrel Macquart." This man would vanish for weeks and then turn up some fine evening, sauntering about with his hands in his pockets and whistling as though he had just come from a short walk.

And the women sitting at their doorsteps as he passed: "There's that scoundrel Macquart! He has hidden his bales and his gun in some hollow of the Viorne." The truth was, Macquart had no means, and yet ate and drank like a happy drone during his short sojourns in the town.

He drank copiously and with fierce obstinacy.
Seating himself alone at a table in some tavern, he would linger there evening after evening, with his eyes stupidly fixed on his glass, neither seeing nor hearing anything around him.