erdure already dense, although made up of
slender plants, and the pretty attentive faces, the skirts spread out
upon the grass made one think of a more innocent and chaste Decameron in
a reposeful atmosphere. To complete the picture of nature at its
loveliest, the distant rustic landscape, two windmills could be seen
through an opening between the branches, turning in the direction of
Suresnes, while, of the dazzling gorgeous vision to be seen at every
cross-road in the Bois, naught reached them save a confused endless
rumbling, to which they finally became so accustomed that they did not
hear it at all. The poet's voice alone, fresh and eloquent, rose in the
silence, the lines came quivering forth, repeated in undertones by other
deeply-moved lips, and there were murmured words of approval, and
thrills of emotion at the tragic passages. Grandmamma, indeed, was seen
to wipe away a great tear. But that was because she had no embroidery in
her hand.

The first work! That is what _Revolte_ was to Andre--the first work,
always too copious and diffuse, into which the author tosses first of
all a whole lifetime of ideas and opinions, pressing for utterance like
water against the edge of a dam, and which is often the richest, if not
the best, of an author's productions. As for the fate that awaited it,
no one could say what it might be; and the uncertainty that hovered
about the reading of the drama added to his emotion the emotion of each
of his auditors, the white-robed hopes of Mademoiselle Elise, M.
Joyeuse's fanciful hallucinations and the more positive desires of
Aline, who was already in anticipation installing her sister in the
nest, rocked by the winds but envied by the multitude, of an artist's
household!

Ah! if one of those pleasure-seekers circling the lake for the hundredth
time, overwhelmed by the monotony of his habit, had chanced to put aside
the branches, how surprised he would have been at that picture! But
would he have suspected all the passion and dreams and poetry and hope
that were contained in that little nook of verdure hardly larger than
the denticulated shadow of a fern on the moss?

"You were right, I did not know the Bois," said Paul in an undertone to
Aline, as she leaned on his arm.

They were following a narrow sheltered path, and as they talked they
walked very rapidly, far in advance of the others. But it was not Pere
Kontzen's terrace nor his crisp fritters that attracted them. No, the