After this he began to cough, and the good Sister said—
"Je crains que monsieur ne le fatigue un peu!"
So I had to bid him good-bye; and after I had squeezed and kissed his hand, he made me a most courtly bow, as though I had been a complete stranger.
I rushed away, tossing up my arms like a madman in my pity and sorrow for my dear old friend, and my general regret and disenchantment. I made for the Bois de Boulogne, there to find, instead of the old rabbit-and-roebuck-haunted thickets and ferneries and impenetrable growth, a huge artificial lake, with row-boats and skiffs, and a rockery that would have held its own in Rosherville gardens. And on the way thither, near the iron gates in the fortifications, whom should I meet but one of my friends the couriers, on his way from St. Cloud to the Tuileries! There he rode with his arms jogging up and down, and his low glazed hat, and his immense jack-boots, just the same as ever, never rising in his stirrups, as his horse trotted to the jingle of the sweet little chime round its neck.
[Illustration: GREEN AND GOLD]
Alas! his coat was no longer the innocent, unsophisticated blue and silver livery of the bourgeois king, but the hateful green and gold of another régime.
Farther on the Mare d'Auteuil itself had suffered change and become respectable—imperially respectable. No more frogs or newts or water-beetles, I felt sure; but gold and silver fish in vulgar Napoleonic profusion.
No words that I can find would give any idea of the sadness and longing that filled me as I trod once more that sunlit grassy brink—the goal of my fond ambition for twelve long years.
It was Sunday, and many people were about—many children, in their best Sunday clothes and on their best behavior, discreetly throwing crumbs to the fish. A new generation, much quieter and better dressed than my cousins and I, who had once so filled the solitude with the splashing of our nets, and the excited din of our English voices.
As I sat down on a bench by the old willow (where the rat lived), and gazed and gazed, it almost surprised me that the very intensity of my desire did not of itself suffice to call up the old familiar faces and forms, and conjure away these modern intruders. The power to do this seemed almost within my reach; I willed and willed and willed with all my might, but in vain; I could not cheat my sight or hearing for a moment. There they remained, unconscious and undisturbed, those happy, well-mannered, well-appointed little French people, and fed the gold and silver fish; and there, with an aching heart, I left them.