Peter found that his friend seemed to understand a great deal of his thoughts without explanation.

He neither condoled nor exhorted; rather he watched with an almost shy interest the other's inward battle.
They lodged at the Hotel de l'Angleterre, that hostelry in the street that leads up and out of the town towards Saint Riquier, which you enter from a courtyard that opens on the road and has rooms that you reach by means of narrow, rickety flights of stairs and balconies overhanging the court.

The big dining-room wore an air of gloomy festivity.

Its chandeliers swathed in brown paper, its faded paint, and its covered upholstery, suggested that it awaited a day yet to be when it should blossom forth once more in glory as in the days of old.

Till then it was as merry as it could be.