She answered with a sleepy smile: 

“How stupid you are!” Then, shaking off her torpor, she added:  “Now, let somebody say something to make us laugh.  You, Monsieur Chenal, who have the reputation of having had more love affairs than the Due de Richelieu, tell us a love story in which you have played a part; anything you like.”

Leon Chenal, an old painter, who had once been very handsome, very strong, very proud of his physique and very popular with women, took his long white beard in his hand and smiled.  Then, after a few moments’ reflection, he suddenly became serious.

“Ladies, it will not be an amusing tale, for I am going to relate to you the saddest love affair of my life, and I sincerely hope that none of my friends may ever pass through a similar experience.

“I was twenty-five years of age and was pillaging along the coast of Normandy.  I call ‘pillaging’ wandering about, with a knapsack on one’s back, from inn to inn, under the pretext of making studies and sketching landscapes.  I knew nothing more enjoyable than that happy-go-lucky wandering life, in which one is perfectly free, without shackles of any kind, without care, without preoccupation, without thinking even of the morrow.  One goes in any direction one pleases, without any guide save his fancy, without any counsellor save his eyes.  One stops because a running brook attracts one, because the smell of potatoes frying tickles one’s olfactories on passing an inn.  Sometimes it is the perfume of clematis which decides one in his choice or the roguish glance of the servant at an inn.  Do not despise me for my affection for these rustics.  These girls have a soul as well as senses, not to mention firm cheeks and fresh lips; while their hearty and willing kisses have the flavor of wild fruit.  Love is always love, come whence it may.  A heart that beats at your approach, an eye that weeps when you go away are things so rare, so sweet, so precious that they must never be despised.

“I have had rendezvous in ditches full of primroses, behind the cow stable and in barns among the straw, still warm from the heat of the day.  I have recollections of coarse gray cloth covering supple peasant skin and regrets for simple, frank kisses, more delicate in their unaffected sincerity than the subtle favors of charming and distinguished women.

“But what one loves most amid all these varied adventures is the country, the woods, the rising of the sun, the twilight, the moonlight.  These are, for the painter, honeymoon trips with Nature.  One is alone with her in that long and quiet association.  You go to sleep in the fields, amid marguerites and poppies, and when you open your eyes in the full glare of the sunlight you descry in the distance the little village with its pointed clock tower which sounds the hour of noon.