ilently and poorly, with a woman who was neither young nor
old, neither homely nor pretty, neither a peasant nor a bourgeoise, who
served him. The plot of earth which he called his garden was celebrated
in the town for the beauty of the flowers which he cultivated there.
These flowers were his occupation.

By dint of labor, of perseverance, of attention, and of buckets of
water, he had succeeded in creating after the Creator, and he had
invented certain tulips and certain dahlias which seemed to have been
forgotten by nature. He was ingenious; he had forestalled Soulange
Bodin in the formation of little clumps of earth of heath mould, for the
cultivation of rare and precious shrubs from America and China. He
was in his alleys from the break of day, in summer, planting, cutting,
hoeing, watering, walking amid his flowers with an air of kindness,
sadness, and sweetness, sometimes standing motionless and thoughtful
for hours, listening to the song of a bird in the trees, the babble of a
child in a house, or with his eyes fixed on a drop of dew at the tip of
a spear of grass, of which the sun made a carbuncle. His table was very
plain, and he drank more milk than wine. A child could make him give
way, and his servant scolded him. He was so timid that he seemed shy, he
rarely went out, and he saw no one but the poor people who tapped at his
pane and his cure, the Abbe Mabeuf, a good old man. Nevertheless, if the
inhabitants of the town, or strangers, or any chance comers, curious to
see his tulips, rang at his little cottage, he opened his door with a
smile. He was the "brigand of the Loire."

Any one who had, at the same time, read military memoirs, biographies,
the Moniteur, and the bulletins of the grand army, would have been
struck by a name which occurs there with tolerable frequency, the name
of Georges Pontmercy. When very young, this Georges Pontmercy had been
a soldier in Saintonge's regiment. The revolution broke out. Saintonge's
regiment formed a part of the army of the Rhine; for the old regiments
of the monarchy preserved their names of provinces even after the fall
of the monarchy, and were only divided into brigades in 1794. Pontmercy
fought at Spire, at Worms, at Neustadt, at Turkheim, at Alzey, at
Mayence, where he was one of the two hundred who formed Houchard's
rearguard. It was the twelfth to hold its ground against the corps
of the Prince of Hesse, behind the old rampart of Andernach, and only
rejoined