paragus grew in such a fashion that it resembled a
little wood of feathers.

All this piece of land had been under the Directory what is called "a
folly." The trees had, since then, grown enormously. Clematis
obstructed the hornbeams, the walks were covered with moss, brambles
abounded on every side. Fragments of statues let their plaster crumble
in the grass. The feet of anyone walking through the place got entangled
in iron-wire work. There now remained of the pavilion only two
apartments on the ground floor, with some blue paper hanging in shreds.
Before the facade extended an arbour in the Italian style, in which a
vine-tree was supported on columns of brick by a rail-work of sticks.

Soon they arrived at this spot; and, as the light fell through the
irregular gaps on the green herbage, Frederick, turning his head on one
side to speak to Louise, noticed the shadow of the leaves on her face.

She had in her red hair, stuck in her chignon, a needle, terminated by a
glass bell in imitation of emerald, and, in spite of her mourning, she
wore (so artless was her bad taste) straw slippers trimmed with pink
satin--a vulgar curiosity probably bought at some fair.

He remarked this, and ironically congratulated her.

"Don't be laughing at me!" she replied.

Then surveying him altogether, from his grey felt hat to his silk
stockings:

"What an exquisite you are!"

After this, she asked him to mention some works which she could read. He
gave her the names of several; and she said:

"Oh! how learned you are!"

While yet very small, she had been smitten with one of those childish
passions which have, at the same time, the purity of a religion and the
violence of a natural instinct. He had been her comrade, her brother,
her master, had diverted her mind, made her heart beat more quickly,
and, without any desire for such a result, had poured out into the very
depths of her being a latent and continuous intoxication. Then he had
parted with her at the moment of a tragic crisis in her existence, when
her mother had only just died, and these two separations had been
mingled together. Absence had idealised him in her memory. He had come
back with a sort of halo round his head; and she gave herself up
ingenuously to the feelings of bliss she experienced at seeing him once
more.

For the first time in his life Frederick felt himself beloved; and this
new pleasure, which did not transcend the ordinary run of agreeable
sensa