went a servant who
carried a stable-lantern; Lucette and I walked behind him. Our feet were
protected from the wet ground by wooden shoes, and with much difficulty
we held over us a large umbrella that the wind constantly turned inside
out.

Once outside I was no longer afraid; I opened my eyes wide and listened
with all my ears. Oh! how wonderful, and yet how sinister, the end of
the garden looked seen by those sudden and great flashes of green light
that shimmered and trembled about us from time to time, and then left us
blind in the blackness of the stormy night. And I shall never forget the
impression made upon me by the continual crashing of the branches of the
trees in the near-by oak forest.

We found Duruy's "History" in the asparagus bed all water soaked and mud
bespattered. Before the storm the snails, exhilarated no doubt by the
promise of rain, had crawled over the book and they had left their
slimy, glistening traces upon it.

Those small tracks remained on the book for a long time, preserved,
doubtless, by the paper cover that I put over them. They had the power
to recall a thousand things to me, thanks to that peculiarity of my mind
that associates the most dissimilar and incongruous images if only once,
for a single favorable moment, they have been accidentally joined.

And therefore the little, shining, zig-zag marks on the cover of Duruy
always brought to my mind Rameau's gay dance that I played on the shrill
old piano, only to have it drowned by the noise of the raging storm;
and the same little blotches also recall to me a vision that I had that
night (one, no doubt, born of an engraving by Teniers that hung on the
wall); there seemed to pass before my eyes little people belonging to a
bygone age who danced in the shade of a wood like that of Limoise; the
apparition awakened in me an appreciation of the pastoral gayety of that
time, a conception of the abandon and joyousness of the picnickers who
were dancing so merrily under the spreading branches of the oak trees.

CHAPTER XL.

And yet the return home from Limoise Thursday evenings would have had
a great charm but for the remorse I almost always felt because of
neglected duties.

My friends took me as far as the river in the carriage, or I rode on a
donkey, or we walked. Once past the stony plateau on the south bank of
the river, and once over it and upon the home side I found my father
and sister awaiting me; I walked gayly besid