As for M. Chebe, who prided himself on being as fond of nature as the late Jean Jacques Rousseau, he did not appreciate it without the accompaniments of shooting-matches, wooden horses, sack races, and a profusion of dust and penny-whistles, which constituted also Madame Chebe’s ideal of a country life.

But Sidonie had a different ideal; and those Parisian Sundays passed in strolling through noisy village streets depressed her beyond measure.  Her only pleasure in those throngs was the consciousness of being stared at.  The veriest boor’s admiration, frankly expressed aloud at her side, made her smile all day; for she was of those who disdain no compliment.

Sometimes, leaving the Chebes and Delobelle in the midst of the fete, Risler would go into the fields with his brother and the “little one” in search of flowers for patterns for his wall-papers.  Frantz, with his long arms, would pull down the highest branches of a hawthorn, or would climb a park wall to pick a leaf of graceful shape he had spied on the other side.  But they reaped their richest harvests on the banks of the stream.

There they found those flexible plants, with long swaying stalks, which made such a lovely effect on hangings, tall, straight reeds, and the volubilis, whose flower, opening suddenly as if in obedience to a caprice, resembles a living face, some one looking at you amid the lovely, quivering foliage.  Risler arranged his bouquets artistically, drawing his inspiration from the very nature of the plants, trying to understand thoroughly their manner of life, which can not be divined after the withering of one day.

Then, when the bouquet was completed, tied with a broad blade of grass as with a ribbon, and slung over Frantz’s back, away they went.  Risler, always engrossed in his art, looked about for subjects, for possible combinations, as they walked along.

“Look there, little one—­see that bunch of lily of the valley, with its white bells, among those eglantines.  What do you think?  Wouldn’t that be pretty against a sea-green or pearl-gray background?”

But Sidonie cared no more for lilies of the valley than for eglantine.  Wild flowers always seemed to her like the flowers of the poor, something like her lilac dress.

She remembered that she had seen flowers of a different sort at the house of M. Gardinois, at the Chateau de Savigny, in the hothouses, on the balconies, and all about the gravelled courtyard bordered with tall urns.  Those were the flowers she loved; that was her idea of the country!

The little stations in the outskirts of Paris are so terribly crowded and stuffy on those Sunday evenings in summer!  Such artificial enjoyment, such idiotic laughter, such doleful ballads, sung in whispers by voices that no longer have the strength to roar!  That was the time when M. Chebe was in his element.

He would elbow his way to the gate, scold about the delay of the train, declaim against the station-agent, the company, the government; say to Delobelle in a loud voice, so as to be overheard by his neighbors: