e that I love them chiefly because they were the confidants and
friends of my early years, when, as an idle, questioning little girl, I
would stand with my hands clasped in front of me and my forehead glued
to the panes. My childhood spent at those windows was a picture of
patient waiting.

Often they come back to me, the windows of that big house in a
provincial town, on one side lighted up and beautiful with the beauty of
the gay garden on which their lace-veiled casements opened, on the other
a little dark and lone, as though listening to the voice and the dreary
illusion of the church which they enframe....

3

The current of my life, diverted for a moment, returned to the present
and, as always, it swelled with the gladness that rises to our hearts
whenever chance conjures up a past whose chains we have shattered.

Happier and lighter at heart, I continued with Rose my visit to the
galleries, the gardens and the hot-houses. The luncheon passed off well.
Rose was quite at ease and suggested in that elegant setting a stage
shepherdess, whose beauty transfigured the simplest clothes. A silk
kerchief with a bright pattern of flowers is folded loosely round her
neck; her chemisette and skirt are freshly washed and ironed, her hands
well tended and her hair gracefully knotted. She introduces a striking
and very charming note into the Empire dining-room. More than once,
during lunch, I congratulated myself on not having yielded to the
temptation to adorn her with the thousand absurd and cunning trifles
that constitute our modern dress, for her little blunders of speech and
movement found an excuse in her peasant's costume. Nevertheless, she
answered intelligently the questions put to her on the treatment of
cattle and the cultivation of the soil; and I had every reason to be
proud of her. Her grave and reserved air charmed everybody. If she often
grieves and disappoints me, is this not due more particularly to the
absence of certain qualities which her beauty had wrongly led me to
expect?

4

Before taking our seats in the trap, we go for a stroll through the
village. As we pass in front of the baker's, a splendid young fellow,
naked to the waist, comes out of the house and stands in the doorway.
The flour with which his arms and his bronzed chest are sprinkled
softens their modelling very prettily. His sturdy neck, on which his
head, the head of a young Roman, looks almost small, his straight nose,
long eyes