"Because I am thinking of my poor little boy. If he had lived, he would be seven years old now. Can't you understand, Agathe, how happy it would make me to have him by my side, to take him by the hand, or to watch him running along the road like you? He was such a pretty boy! I am sure he would have grown to be very fine-looking—my poor little Léon!"
"Mon Dieu! Honorine, if you are going to mourn over that, you will be sad and sigh—and the doctor said that would make you sick."
"It's over, Agathe—you are right; I do not mean to disturb your joy; but, you see, when I think of the new life we are going to lead here, of the sweet peaceful life that is to be ours, when we have left Paris, oh! then I can't help thinking of my son, who always had a place in my dreams of happiness and of the future. You have no idea, Agathe, of a mother's love, and you cannot understand the incurable wound that the loss of that child has made in my heart! But it's all over now, poor love! Now you are sad, too. Come, let us turn our thoughts to finding the house that's for sale; we are to apply to——"
"Monsieur Ledrux, gardener and florist, to see Monsieur Courtivaux's house."
"That's it. We will inquire of the first peasant we meet; in the country everybody knows everybody else."
When the two young women reached the village they soon met a laboring man, to whom they said:
"Can you direct us to the house of Monsieur Ledrux, gardener and florist, please?"
"Ledrux! Well! is it a Ledrux Cailleux or a Ledrux Leblond, or just plain Ledrux? There's lots of Ledruxes hereabout, you see, and we give each of 'em a nickname to tell 'em apart. It's like the Thomases and the Gaillots, there's a swarm of 'em! there's some families where they've had heaps of children."
"The Monsieur Ledrux whom we wish to find is a gardener and florist."
"Oh! but everybody's a gardener round here; you see, we don't go after our neighbor when we want to trim our trees or vines."