Every Saturday afterwards there was a similar furbishing, a tornado of dust and water lasting for four hours.  It was Rosalie’s wish to display her neatness to Zephyrin on the Sunday.  That was her reception day.  A single cobweb would have filled her with shame; but when everything shone resplendent around her she became amiable, and burst into song.  At three o’clock she would again wash her hands and don a cap gay with ribbons.  Then the curtain being drawn halfway, so that only the subdued light of a boudoir came in, she awaited Zephyrin’s arrival amidst all this primness, through which a pleasant scent of thyme and laurel was borne.

At half-past three exactly Zephyrin made his appearance; he would walk about the street until the clocks of the neighborhood had struck the half-hour.  Rosalie listened to the beat of his heavy shoes on the stairs, and opened the door the moment he halted on the landing.  She had forbidden him to ring the bell.  At each visit the same greeting passed between them.

“Is it you?”

“Yes, it’s me!”

And they stood face to face, their eyes sparkling and their lips compressed.  Then Zephyrin followed Rosalie; but there was no admission vouchsafed to him till she had relieved him of shako and sabre.  She would have none of these in her kitchen; and so the sabre and shako were hidden away in a cupboard.  Next she would make him sit down in the corner she had contrived near the window, and thenceforth he was not allowed to budge.

“Sit still there!  You can look on, if you like, while I get madame’s dinner ready.”

But he rarely appeared with empty hands.  He would usually spend the morning in strolling with some comrades through the woods of Meudon, lounging lazily about, inhaling the fresh air, which inspired him with regretful memories of his country home.  To give his fingers something to do he would cut switches, which he tapered and notched with marvelous figurings, and his steps gradually slackening he would come to a stop beside some ditch, his shako on the back of his head, while his eyes remained fixed on the knife with which he was carving the stick.  Then, as he could never make up his mind to discard his switches, he carried them in the afternoon to Rosalie, who would throw up her hands, and exclaim that they would litter her kitchen.  But the truth was, she carefully preserved them; and under her bed was gathered a bundle of these switches, of all sorts and sizes.

One day he made his appearance with a nest full of eggs, which he had secreted in his shako under the folds of a handkerchief.  Omelets made from the eggs of wild birds, so he declared, were very nice—­a statement which Rosalie received with horror; the nest, however, was preserved and laid away in company with the switches.  But Zephyrin’s pockets were always full to overflowing.  He would pull curiosities from them, transparent pebbles found on the banks of the Seine, pieces of old iron, dried berries, and