“Half-past ten in the morning?”
“Why, no! in the evening. Are you mad?”
“Do you call that late?”
“I should say so! the custom is to go home at ten o’clock precisely.”
“Great heaven! I am no longer surprised that your children wake you up at seven o’clock! But on Sundays?”
“Oh! on Sundays we meet at monsieur le maire’s. There are always a lot of people there. He has a billiard table, and, besides that, the young people dance. You can judge for yourself what fun we have. That, my dear Eugène, is the way we employ the week. As you see, there is some new pleasure every day, and we have no time to be bored.”
“You have no theatrical performances?”
“Very seldom; but we get along without them.”
“No concerts?”
“Why, what about those we give among ourselves? And then, in fine weather, there are the drives about the neighborhood, which are beautiful: the little forest of La Rochette, Trois-Moulins, and a thousand delicious spots. And fishing and hunting, and the news of the town; the little intrigues that everybody knows about after a week, the quarrels, the gossip, the comments, the fashions, which we think about here even more than they do in Paris; and the parties, dinners, baptisms, weddings; ah! the weddings above all! they give us something to talk about for a month!—Oh! you’ll see, my dear brother, that we have a much better time in the provinces than they do in Paris.”