n artilleryman, who was doing sentry
duty beside a cannon: "Say! old fellow, you'd rather drink one than
stand guard over it, eh?"[1]

"Isn't he funny?" said Adele to Germinie, nudging her with her elbow.

Soon they were fairly in the forest of Vincennes.

Narrow paths crossed and recrossed in every direction on the hard,
uneven, footprint-covered ground. In the spaces between all these little
roads there was here and there a little grass, but down-trodden,
withered, yellow, dead grass, strewn about like bedding for cattle, its
straw-colored blades were everywhere mingled with briars, amid the dull
green of nettles. It was easily recognizable as one of the rural spots
to which the great faubourgs resort on Sundays to loll about in the
grass, and which resemble a lawn trampled by a crowd after a display of
fireworks. Gnarled, misshapen trees were scattered here and there; dwarf
elms with gray trunks covered with yellow, leprous-like spots and
stripped of branches to a point higher than a man's head; scraggy oaks,
eaten by caterpillars so that their leaves were like lacework. The
verdure was scant and sickly and entirely unshaded, the leaves above had
a very unhealthy look; the stunted, ragged, parched foliage made only
faint green lines against the sky. Clouds of dust from the high-roads
covered the bushes with a gray pall. Everything had the wretched,
impoverished aspect of trampled vegetation that has no chance to
breathe, the melancholy effect of the grass at the barriers! Nature
seemed to sprout from beneath the pavements. No birds sang in the trees,
no insects hummed about the dusty ground; the noise of the spring-carts
stunned the birds; the hand-organ put the rustling of the trees to
silence; the denizens of the street strolled about through the paths,
singing. Women's hats, fastened with four pins to a handkerchief, were
hanging from the trees; the red plume of an artilleryman burst upon one
at every moment through the scanty leaves; dealers in honey rose from
the thickets; on the trampled greensward children in blouses were
cutting twigs, workingmen's families idling their time away nibbling at
_pleasure_, and little urchins catching butterflies in their caps. It
was a forest after the pattern of the original Bois de Boulogne, hot and
dusty, a much-frequented and sadly-abused promenade, one of those spots,
avaricious of shade, to which the common people flock to disport
themselves at the gates of great capital