"Are you quite sure it is your cow, and not a roebuck?" M. Arnault then asked her.
"Oh, monsieur, you will see...."
And the woman, running up to the cow, hung on the animal's tail, which she pulled so hard that the poor beast began to moo.
"You are right," said M. Arnault; "I think I am mistaken." And he sat down again, laid his gun on the ground, took up his pencil and note-book and resumed his fable, which he composedly finished.
M. Arnault's family consisted of Lucien and Telleville, his two sons by a first marriage; of Louis and Gabrielle, his two children by a second marriage. M. Arnault's second wife was a young lady from Bonneuil. Let me say a few words about this excellent family. We will begin, like the Gospels, with the meek and mild members.
Gabrielle was a pretty child of fourteen or fifteen, with a dazzlingly white complexion; she was of no more account in the household as yet than a bud in a bouquet. Louis was about my own age, namely, twenty or twenty-one. He was a good-looking lad, fair, fresh-coloured, rosy-cheeked, a trifle spruce, ever laughing, on the most friendly terms with his sister, full of respect for his mother and admiration for his father. Telleville was a handsome captain; very brave, very loyal, very daring, a Bonapartist like the rest of the family, thrown into the midst of the artistic world, without ever having written a verse of poetry, but possessing a delightful wit, and being full of spirit and originality. Lucien, the author of Régulus, and, later, of Pierre de Portugal and of Tibère, had too cold and calculating a mind to be really poetical; yet there was a certain boldness of style in his lines and a certain melancholy about his ideas, that appealed both to the imagination and to the heart. There is one of the truest and most charming lines I know, in Pierre de Portugal, a line such as Racine wrote in his best days, universally known because it belongs to that school:—
"Les chagrins du départ sont pour celui qui reste."
The year before my arrival in Paris, Régulus had achieved enormous popularity. I will quote a few lines of it, to give some idea of the author, who appears to have given up literary work.
Regulus is about to leave Rome, to which he was devotedly attached, and he says to Licinius:—
"Je meurs pour la sauver, c'est mourir digne d'elle!
Mais, toi, Licinius, parjure à l'amitié,
Disciple de ma gloire, as-tu donc oublié
Ces jours où j'opposais, dans les champs du carnage,
Ma vieille expérience à ton jeune courage?
Aimant un vrai soldat dans un vrai citoyen,
Ne le souvient-il plus que, par un doux lien,
Ma tendresse voulait vous unir l'un à l'autre?
Le hasard a trahi mon espoir et le vôtre;
Mais, des bords du tombeau, je puis enfin bénir
Les nœuds qui pour jamais doivent vous réunir.
Si tu l'aimes, viens, jure au dieu de la victoire
De servir, aujourd'hui, la patrie et la gloire;
D'éclairer les Romains par toi seul égarés;
De rétablir la paix dans ces remparts sacrés;
Jure! dis-je. A l'instant, je te donne ma fille,
Je te lègue mon nom, mon honneur, ma famille;
Et les dieux ne m'auront opprimé qu'à demi,
Si, dans un vrai Romain, je retrouve un ami!"