t. After
ordering dinner for midday, they all set off, preceded by their
paintboxes, drawing-boards, easels, and parasols, which were carried by
a village lad, for the meadows near the confluence of the Orge and the
Yvette, a charming bit of country giving a view over the verdant plain
of Longjumeau and bounded by the Seine and the woods of
Sainte-Genevieve.

Jean Blaise, the leader of the troop of artists, was bandying funny
stories with the _ci-devant_ financier, tales that brought in without
rhyme or reason Verboquet the Open-handed, Catherine Cuissot the pedlar,
the demoiselles Chaudron, the fortune-teller Galichet, as well as
characters of a later time like Cadet-Rousselle and Madame Angot.

Evariste, inspired with a sudden love of nature, as he saw a troop of
harvesters binding their sheaves, felt the tears rise to his eyes, while
visions of concord and affection filled his heart. For his part,
Desmahis was blowing the light down of the seeding dandelions into the
_citoyennes'_ hair. All three loved posies, as town-bred girls always
do, and were busy in the meadows plucking the mullein, whose blossoms
grow in spikes close round the stem, the campanula, with its little
blue-bells hanging in rows one above another, the slender twigs of the
scented vervain, wallwort, mint, dyer's weed, milfoil--all the wild
flowers of late summer. Jean-Jacques had made botany the fashion among
townswomen, so all three knew the name and symbolism of every flower. As
the delicate petals, drooping for want of moisture, wilted in her hands
and fell in a shower about her feet, the _citoyenne_ Elodie sighed:

"They are dying already, the poor flowers!"

All set to work and strove to express nature as they saw her; but each
saw her through the eyes of a master. In a short time Philippe Dubois
had knocked off in the style of Hubert Robert a deserted farm, a clump
of storm-riven trees, a dried-up torrent. Evariste Gamelin found a
landscape by Poussin ready made on the banks of the Yvette. Philippe
Desmahis was at work before a pigeon-cote in the picaresque manner of
Callot and Duplessis. Old Brotteaux who piqued himself on imitating the
Flemings, was drawing a cow with infinite care. Elodie was sketching a
peasant's hut, while her friend Julienne, who was a colourman's
daughter, set her palette. A swarm of children pressed about her,
watching her paint, whom she would scold out of her light at intervals,
calling them pestering gnats and g