Beyond the park, between the village and the walls, lay the cultivated parts of Blangy,—­meadows where the cows were grazing, small properties surrounded by hedges, filled with fruit of all kinds, nut and apple trees.  By way of frame, the heights on which the noble forest-trees were ranged, tier above tier, closed in the scene.  The countess had come out in her slippers to look at the flowers in her balcony, which were sending up their morning fragrance; she wore a cambric dressing-gown, beneath which the rosy tints of her white shoulders could be seen; a coquettish little cap was placed in a bewitching manner on her hair, which escaped it recklessly; her little feet showed their warm flesh color through the transparent stockings; the cambric gown, unconfined at the waist, floated open as the breeze took it, and showed an embroidered petticoat.

“Oh! are you there?” she said.

“Yes.”

“What are you looking at?”

“A pretty question!  You have torn me from the contemplation of Nature.  Tell me, countess, will you go for a walk in the woods this morning before breakfast?”

“What an idea!  You know I have a horror of walking.”

“We will only walk a little way; I’ll drive you in the tilbury and take Joseph to hold the horses.  You have never once set foot in your forest; and I have just noticed something very curious, a phenomenon; there are spots where the tree-tops are the color of Florentine bronze, the leaves are dried—­”

“Well, I’ll dress.”

“Oh, if you do, we can’t get off for two hours.  Take a shawl, put on a bonnet, and boots; that’s all you want.  I shall tell them to harness.”

“You always make me do what you want; I’ll be ready in a minute.”

“General,” said Blondet, waking the count, who grumbled and turned over, like a man who wants his morning sleep.  “We are going for a drive; won’t you come?”

A quarter of an hour later the tilbury was slowly rolling along the park avenue, followed by a liveried groom on horseback.

The morning was a September morning.  The dark blue of the sky burst forth here and there from the gray of the clouds, which seemed the sky itself, the ether seeming to be the accessory; long lines of ultramarine lay upon the horizon, but in strata, which alternated with other lines like sand-bars; these tones changed and grew green at the level of the forests.  The earth beneath this overhanging mantle was moistly warm, like a woman when she rises; it exhaled sweet, luscious odors, which yet were wild, not civilized,—­the scent of cultivation was added to the scents of the woods.  Just then the Angelus was ringing at Blangy, and the sounds of the bell, mingling with the wild concert of the forest, gave harmony to the silence.  Here and there were rising vapors, white, diaphanous.