3
The current of my life, diverted for a moment, returned to the present and, as always, it swelled with the gladness that rises to our hearts whenever chance conjures up a past whose chains we have shattered.
Happier and lighter at heart, I continued with Rose my visit to the galleries, the gardens and the hot-houses. The luncheon passed off well. Rose was quite at ease and suggested in that elegant setting a stage shepherdess, whose beauty transfigured the simplest clothes. A silk kerchief with a bright pattern of flowers is folded loosely round her neck; her chemisette and skirt are freshly washed and ironed, her hands well tended and her hair gracefully knotted. She introduces a striking and very charming note into the Empire dining-room. More than once, during lunch, I congratulated myself on not having yielded to the temptation to adorn her with the thousand absurd and cunning trifles that constitute our modern dress, for her little blunders of speech and movement found an excuse in her peasant's costume. Nevertheless, she answered intelligently the questions put to her on the treatment of cattle and the cultivation of the soil; and I had every reason to be proud of her. Her grave and reserved air charmed everybody. If she often grieves and disappoints me, is this not due more particularly to the absence of certain qualities which her beauty had wrongly led me to expect?