, only its large ears showing. Then it swerved across a furrow,
stopped, started off again at full speed, changed its course, stopped
anew, uneasy, spying out every danger, uncertain what route to take,
when suddenly it began to run with great bounds, disappearing finally in
a large patch of beet-root. All the men had waked up to watch the course
of the animal.

Rene Lamanoir exclaimed:

"We are not at all gallant this morning," and; regarding his neighbor,
the little Baroness de Serennes, who struggled against sleep, he said to
her in a low tone: "You are thinking of your husband, baroness. Reassure
yourself; he will not return before Saturday, so you have still four
days."

She answered with a sleepy smile:

"How stupid you are!" Then, shaking off her torpor, she added: "Now, let
somebody say something to make us laugh. You, Monsieur Chenal, who
have the reputation of having had more love affairs than the Due
de Richelieu, tell us a love story in which you have played a part;
anything you like."

Leon Chenal, an old painter, who had once been very handsome, very
strong, very proud of his physique and very popular with women, took
his long white beard in his hand and smiled. Then, after a few moments'
reflection, he suddenly became serious.

"Ladies, it will not be an amusing tale, for I am going to relate to you
the saddest love affair of my life, and I sincerely hope that none of my
friends may ever pass through a similar experience.

"I was twenty-five years of age and was pillaging along the coast of
Normandy. I call 'pillaging' wandering about, with a knapsack on one's
back, from inn to inn, under the pretext of making studies and sketching
landscapes. I knew nothing more enjoyable than that happy-go-lucky
wandering life, in which one is perfectly free, without shackles of any
kind, without care, without preoccupation, without thinking even of the
morrow. One goes in any direction one pleases, without any guide save
his fancy, without any counsellor save his eyes. One stops because a
running brook attracts one, because the smell of potatoes frying tickles
one's olfactories on passing an inn. Sometimes it is the perfume of
clematis which decides one in his choice or the roguish glance of the
servant at an inn. Do not despise me for my affection for these rustics.
These girls have a soul as well as senses, not to mention firm cheeks
and fresh lips; while their hearty and willing kisses have the flavor of
wi