“Behold upon the verdant grass so sweet,
  The shepherdess is at her shepherd’s feet! 
  Her arms are bare, her foot is small and white,
  The very oxen wonder at the sight;
  Her locks half bound, half floating in the air,
  And gown as light as those that satyrs wear.”

While these lines were given in Madame Deshoulieres’ inimitable recitative, the party had come close to the rustic pair.  “People may well say,” muttered Madeleine, “that the pictures of Nature are always best at a distance.  Can it be possible that this is a shepherdess—­a shepherdess of Lignon?” The shepherdess was in reality a poor little peasant girl, unkempt, unshorn, with hands of prodigious size, a miraculous squint, and a mouth which probably had a beginning, but of which it was impossible to say where it might end.  The shepherd was worthy of his companion; and yet there was something in the extravagant stupidity of his fat and florid countenance that was interesting to a Parisian eye.  Madame Deshoulieres, who was too much occupied with the verses of the great D’Urfe to attend to what was before her, continued her description—­

  “The birds all round her praises ever sing,
  And ’neath her steps the flowers incessant spring.”

“Your occupation here is delightful, isn’t it?” said Madeleine to the peasant girl.

“No, ’tain’t, miss—­that it ain’t.  I gets nothink for all I does, and when I goes hoam at night I gets a good licking to the bargain.”

“And you?” enquired Madeleine, turning to the herdsman, who was slinking off.

“I’m a little b-b-b-etter off nor hur,” said the man, stuttering, “for I gets board and lodging—­dasht if I doesn’t—­but I gets bread like a stone, and s-s-sleeps below a hedge—­dasht if I doesn’t.”

“But where are your sheep, shepherd?” said Bribri.

“Hain’t a got none,” stuttered the man again, “dasht if I has.”

“What!” exclaimed Madeleine in despair, “am I not to see the lovely lambkins bleating and skipping in the meadows on the banks of the Lignon, O Celadon?”

But Madame Deshoulieres was too much of a poetess to hear or see what was going on.  She thought of nothing but the loves of Astrea, and heard nothing but the imaginary songs of contending Damons.

On their return to the chateau, Madeleine and Bribri complained that they had seen neither flock nor shepherdess.

“And are you anxious to see them?” enquired Madame D’Urtis, with a smile.

“Oh, very,” exclaimed Bribri; “we expected to live like shepherdesses when we came here.  I have brought every thing a rustic wants.”

“And so have I,” continued Madeleine; “I have brought twenty yards of rose-coloured ribands, and twenty yards of blue, to ornament my crook and the handsomest of my ewes.”

“Well then,” said the Duchess d’Urtis, good-naturedly, “there are a dozen of sheep feeding at the end of the park.  Take the key of the gate, and drive them into the meadows beyond.”