l himself his own only
on Sunday. The master naturalist, who used to spend the day at the house
of an old female relative, then gave him his liberty on condition that
he dined out, and at his own expense. But my father used secretly to
take with him a crust of bread, which he hid in his botanizing-box, and,
leaving Paris as soon as it was day, he would wander far into the valley
of Montmorency, the wood of Meudon, or among the windings of the
Marne. Excited by the fresh air, the penetrating perfume of the growing
vegetation, or the fragrance of the honeysuckles, he would walk on until
hunger or fatigue made itself felt. Then he would sit under a hedge,
or by the side of a stream, and would make a rustic feast, by turns
on watercresses, wood strawberries, and blackberries picked from the
hedges; he would gather a few plants, read a few pages of Florian,
then in greatest vogue, of Gessner, who was just translated, or of Jean
Jacques, of whom he possessed three old volumes. The day was thus passed
alternately in activity and rest, in pursuit and meditation, until the
declining sun warned him to take again the road to Paris, where he would
arrive, his feet torn and dusty, but his mind invigorated for a whole
week.

One day, as he was going toward the wood of Viroflay, he met, close to
it, a stranger who was occupied in botanizing and in sorting the plants
he had just gathered. He was an elderly man with an honest face; but
his eyes, which were rather deep-set under his eyebrows, had a somewhat
uneasy and timid expression. He was dressed in a brown cloth coat,
a gray waistcoat, black breeches, and worsted stockings, and held an
ivory-headed cane under his arm. His appearance was that of a small
retired tradesman who was living on his means, and rather below the
golden mean of Horace.

My father, who had great respect for age, civilly raised his hat to
him as he passed. In doing so, a plant he held fell from his hand; the
stranger stooped to take it up, and recognized it.

"It is a Deutaria heptaphyllos," said he; "I have not yet seen any of
them in these woods; did you find it near here, sir?"

My father replied that it was to be found in abundance on the top of the
hill, toward Sevres, as well as the great Laserpitium.

"That, too!" repeated the old man more briskly. "Ah! I shall go and look
for them; I have gathered them formerly on the hillside of Robaila."

My father proposed to take him. The stranger accepted his