Every year, in the middle of June, they started for the country, Madame having, it seems, a magnificent château in Touraine. The personnel was re-enforced with a coachman, two gardeners, a second chambermaid, and some barnyard-scullions. There were cows, peacocks, hens, and rabbits. How delightful! William told me the details of their country life with a bitter and grumbling ill-humor. He did not like the country; the fields, the trees, and the flowers made him tired. Nature was endurable to him only with bar-rooms, race-tracks, bookmakers, and jockeys. He was exclusively Parisian.
"Do you know anything more stupid than a chestnut tree?" he often said to me. "Take Edgar, for instance; he is a chic man, a superior man; does he like the country?"
I became enthusiastic:
"Oh! but the flowers in the broad lawns! And the little birds!"
William sneered:
"The flowers? They are pretty only on hats and in the millinery shops. And the little birds? Oh, don't talk about them! They prevent you from sleeping in the morning. They sound like bawling children. Oh! no. Oh! no. I have enough of the country. The country is fit only for peasants."
And, straightening up, with a noble gesture, he concluded, in a proud voice:
"I must have sport. I am not a peasant; I am a sportsman."
Nevertheless I was happy, and I awaited the month of June with impatience. Oh! the marguerites in the meadows; the little paths under the trembling leaves; the nests hidden in the ivies against the old walls; and the nightingales on moonlight nights; and the sweet conversations, hand in hand, on the brinks of wells, lined with honeysuckles and carpeted with maiden's-hair and moss; and the bowls of foaming milk; and the broad-brimmed straw hats; and the little chickens; and the masses heard in the village churches, with their towering steeples; and everything that moves and charms you, and makes an impression on your heart, like one of those pretty ballads they sing in the music-halls!
Although I am fond of fun, I have a poetical nature. The old shepherds, the outspread hay, the birds that pursue one another from branch to branch, and the brooks that run singing over light pebbles, and the handsome lads, with complexions made purple by the sun, like grapes on very old vines,—the handsome lads with robust limbs and powerful chests,—all these things make me dream pleasant dreams. In thinking of these things, I become almost a little girl again, my soul inundated and my heart refreshed by innocence and candor, as a little rain refreshes the little flower too much burned by the sun, too much dried by the wind. And at night, while waiting for William, becoming enthusiastic over the prospects of this future of pure joys, I made verses: