When they were alone Mignon scorned to slap him at every turn.

What good would it have done, since nobody would have enjoyed the spectacle?
He was far too disinterested to be personally entertained by the farcical scenes in which he figured as a bantering husband.

Glad of this short-lived respite, Fauchery stretched his feet out languidly toward the fire and let his upturned eyes wander from the barometer to the clock.

In the course of his march Mignon planted himself in front of Potier's bust, looked at it without seeming to see it and then turned back to the window, outside which yawned the darkling gulf of the courtyard.

The rain had ceased, and there was now a deep silence in the room, which the fierce heat of the coke fire and the flare of the gas jets rendered still more oppressive.