e with the charm of rusticity the
melancholy appeal of a ruined castle. Moreover, as though a peasant's
cot and a shattered donjon were not enough to stir the sensibilities of
his customers, the owner had raised a tomb beneath a weeping-willow,--a
column surmounted by a funeral urn and bearing the inscription:
"Cleonice to her faithful Azor." Rustic cots, ruined keeps, imitation
tombs,--on the eve of being swept away, the aristocracy had erected in
its ancestral parks these symbols of poverty, of decadence and of death.
And now the patriot citizen found his delight in drinking, dancing,
making love in sham hovels, under the broken vaults, a sham in their
very ruin, of sham cloisters and surrounded by a sham graveyard; for was
not he too, like his betters, a lover of nature, a disciple of
Jean-Jacques? was not his heart stuffed as full as theirs with
sensibility and the philosophy of humanity?

Reaching the rendezvous before the appointed time, Evariste waited,
measuring the minutes by the beating of his heart as by the pendulum of
a clock. A patrol passed, guarding a convoy of prisoners. Ten minutes
after a woman dressed all in pink, carrying a bouquet as the fashion
was, escorted by a gentleman in a three-cornered hat, red coat, striped
waistcoat and breeches, slipped into the cottage, both so very like the
gallants and dames of the ancien regime one was bound to think with the
_citoyen_ Blaise that mankind possesses characteristics Revolutions
cannot change.

A few minutes later, coming from Rueil or Saint-Cloud, an old woman
carrying a cylindrical box, painted in brilliant colours, arrived and
sat down beside Gamelin, on his bench. She put down her box in front of
her, and he saw that the lid had a turning needle fixed on it; the poor
woman's trade was to hold a lottery in the public gardens for the
children to try their luck at. She also dealt in "ladies' pleasures," an
old-fashioned sweetmeat which she sold under a new name; whether because
the time-honoured title of "forget-me-nots" called up inappropriate
ideas of unhappiness and retribution or that folks had just got tired of
it in course of time, "forget-me-nots" were now yclept "ladies'
pleasures."

The old dame wiped the sweat from her forehead with a corner of her
apron and broke out into railings against heaven, upbraiding God for
injustice when he made life so hard for his creatures. Her husband kept
a tavern on the river-bank at Saint-Cloud, while she