ith gardens, excites the love of
all its children, who do as the Auvergnats, the Savoyards, in fact,
all French folks do, namely, leave Provins to make their fortunes,
and always return. "Die in one's form," the proverb made for hares and
faithful souls, seems also the motto of a Provins native.

Thus the two Rogrons thought constantly of their dear Provins. While
Jerome sold his thread he saw the Upper town; as he piled up the cards
on which were buttons he contemplated the valley; when he rolled and
unrolled his ribbons he followed the shining rivers. Looking up at his
shelves he saw the ravines where he had often escaped his father's anger
and gone a-nutting or gathering blackberries. But the little square in
the Lower town was the chief object of his thoughts; he imagined how
he could improve his house: he dreamed of a new front, new bedrooms,
a salon, a billiard-room, a dining-room, and the kitchen garden out of
which he would make an English pleasure-ground, with lawns, grottos,
fountains, and statuary. The bedrooms at present occupied by the brother
and sister, on the second floor of a house with three windows front and
six storeys high in the rue Saint-Denis, were furnished with the merest
necessaries, yet no one in Paris had finer furniture than they--in
fancy. When Jerome walked the streets he stopped short, struck with
admiration at the handsome things in the upholsterers' windows, and at
the draperies he coveted for his house. When he came home he would
say to his sister: "I found in such a shop, such and such a piece of
furniture that will just do for the salon." The next day he would buy
another piece, and another, and so on. He rejected, the following month,
the articles of the months before. The Budget itself, could not have
paid for his architectural schemes. He wanted everything he saw, but
abandoned each thing for the last thing. When he saw the balconies of
new houses, when he studied external ornamentation, he thought all such
things, mouldings, carvings, etc., out of place in Paris. "Ah!" he would
say, "those fine things would look much better at Provins." When he
stood on his doorstep leaning against the lintel, digesting his morning
meal, with a vacant eye, the mercer was gazing at the house of his fancy
gilded by the sun of his dream; he walked in his garden; he heard the
jet from his fountain falling in pearly drops upon a slab of limestone;
he played on his own billiard-table; he gathered his o