"But why bother ?" he rejoined, as he started toward Carhaix's, where he was to dine with the astrologer Gevingey and Des Hermies.
"I shall be rid of my obsession awhile," he murmured, groping along in the darkness of the tower.
Des Hermies, hearing him come up the stair, opened the door, casting a shaft of light into the spiral.

Durtal, reaching the landing, saw his friend in shirt sleeves and enveloped in an apron.
"I am, as you see, in the heat of composition," and upon a stew-pan boiling on the stove Des Hermies cast that brief and sure look which a mechanic gives his machine, then he consulted, as if it were a manometer, his watch, hanging to a nail.

"Look," he said, raising the pot lid.
Durtal bent over and through a cloud of vapour he saw a coiled napkin rising and falling with the little billows.

"Where is the leg of mutton ?" "It, my friend, is sewn into that cloth so tightly that the air cannot enter.

It is cooking in this pretty, singing sauce, into which I have thrown a handful of hay, some pods of garlic and slices of carrot and onion, some grated nutmeg, and laurel and thyme.