y, in order to visit the ruins of
Tancarville, we were still asleep, benumbed by the fresh air of the
morning. The women, especially, who were little accustomed to these
early excursions, let their eyelids fall and rise every moment, nodding
their heads or yawning, quite insensible to the emotion of the breaking
of day.

It was autumn. On both sides of the road, the bare fields stretched out,
yellowed by the corn and wheat stubble which covered the soil, like a
beard that had been badly shaved. The spongy earth seemed to smoke. The
larks were singing, high up in the air, while other birds piped in the
bushes.

The sun rose at length in front of us, a bright red on the plane of the
horizon; and in proportion as it ascended, growing clearer from minute
to minute, the country seemed to awake, to smile, to shake itself,
stretch itself, like a young girl who is leaving her bed, in her white
vapor chemise. The Count of Etraille, who was seated on the box, cried:

"Look! look! a hare!" and he extended his arm towards the left, pointing
to a piece of hedge. The animal threaded its way along, almost concealed
by the field, raising only its large ears. Then it swerved across a
deep rut, stopped, pursued again its easy course, changed its direction,
stopped anew, disturbed, spying out every danger, undecided as to the
route it should take; when suddenly it began to run with great bounds of
the hind legs, disappearing finally, in a large patch of beet-root. All
the men had woke up to watch the course of the beast.

Rene Lemanoir then exclaimed:

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

She responded to him with a sleepy smile: "How rude you are." Then,
shaking off her torpor, she added: "Now, let somebody say something that
will make us all laugh. You, Monsieur Chenal, who have the reputation of
possessing a larger fortune than the Duke of Richelieu, tell us a love
story in which you have been mixed up, anything you like."

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

"Ladies, it w