ld remain
three or four days longer in Florence, but their meeting would not be
retarded beyond that. They had appointed a rendezvous, and she rejoiced
in the thought of it. She wore her love mingled with her being and
running in her blood. Still, a part of herself remained in the pavilion
decorated with goats and nymphs a part of herself which never would
return to her. In the full ardor of life, she was dying for things
infinitely delicate and precious. She recalled that Dechartre had said to
her: "Love likes charms. I gathered from the terrace the leaves of a tree
that you had admired." Why had she not thought of taking a stone of the
pavilion wherein she had forgotten the world?

A shout from Pauline drew her from her thoughts. Choulette, jumping from
a bush, had suddenly kissed the maid, who was carrying overcoats and bags
into the carriage. Now he was running through the alleys, joyful, his
ears standing out like horns. He bowed to the Countess Martin.

"I have, then, to say farewell to you, Madame."

He intended to remain in Italy. A lady was calling him, he said: it was
Rome. He wanted to see the cardinals. One of them, whom people praised as
an old man full of sense, would perhaps share the ideas of the socialist
and revolutionary church. Choulette had his aim: to plant on the ruins of
an unjust and cruel civilization the Cross of Calvary, not dead and bare,
but vivid, and with its flowery arms embracing the world. He was founding
with that design an order and a newspaper. Madame Martin knew the order.
The newspaper was to be sold for one cent, and to be written in rhythmic
phrases. It was a newspaper to be sung. Verse, simple, violent, or
joyful, was the only language that suited the people. Prose pleased only
people whose intelligence was very subtle. He had seen anarchists in the
taverns of the Rue Saint Jacques. They spent their evenings reciting and
listening to romances.

And he added:

"A newspaper which shall be at the same time a song-book will touch the
soul of the people. People say I have genius. I do not know whether they
are right. But it must be admitted that I have a practical mind."

Miss Bell came down the steps, putting on her gloves:

"Oh, darling, the city and the mountains and the sky wish you to lament
your departure. They make themselves beautiful to-day in order to make
you regret quitting them and desire to see them again."

But Choulette, whom the dryness of the Tuscan climate