going crazy!"

A COUNTRY EXCURSION

For five months they had been talking of going to lunch at some country
restaurant in the neighborhood of Paris, on Madame Dufour's birthday,
and as they were looking forward very impatiently to the outing, they
had risen very early that morning. Monsieur Dufour had borrowed the
milkman's tilted cart, and drove himself. It was a very neat, two
wheeled conveyance, with a hood, and in it Madame Dufour, resplendent
in a wonderful, sherry-colored silk dress, sat by the side of her
husband.

The old grandmother and the daughter were accommodated with two chairs,
and a yellow-haired youth, of whom, however, nothing was to be seen
except his head, lay at the bottom of the trap.

When they got to the bridge of Neuilly, Monsieur Dufour said: "Here we
are in the country at last!" At that warning, his wife grew sentimental
about the beauties of nature. When they got to the crossroads at
Courbevoie, they were seized with admiration for the tremendous view
down there: on the right was the spire of Argenteuil church, above it
rose the hills of Sannois and the mill of Orgemont, while on the left,
the aqueduct of Marly stood out against the clear morning sky. In the
distance they could see the terrace of Saint-Germain, and opposite to
them, at the end of a low chain of hills, the new fort of Cormeilles.
Afar--a very long way off, beyond the plains and villages--one could
see the somber green of the forests.

The sun was beginning to shine in their faces, the dust got into their
eyes, and on either side of the road there stretched an interminable
tract of bare, ugly country, which smelled unpleasantly. You would have
thought that it had been ravaged by a pestilence which had even
attacked the buildings, for skeletons of dilapidated and deserted
houses; or small cottages left in an unfinished state, as if the
contractors had not been paid, reared their four roofless walls on each
side.

Here and there tall factory-chimneys rose up from the barren soil, the
only vegetation on that putrid land, where the spring breezes wafted an
odor of petroleum and soot, mingled with another smell that was even
still less agreeable. At last, however, they crossed the Seine a second
time. It was delightful on the bridge; the river sparkled in the sun,
and they had a feeling of quiet satisfaction and enjoyment in drinking
in purer air, not impregnated by the black smoke of factories, nor by
the miasma from th