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: 

“I say—­suppose such a thing as this should happen in America!” Which remark, thanks to the expressive by-play of the illustrious actor, and to the superior air with which he replied, “I believe you!” gave those who stood near to understand that these gentlemen knew exactly what would happen in America in such a case.  Now, they were equally and entirely ignorant on that subject; but upon the crowd their words made an impression.

Sitting beside Frantz, with half of his bundle of flowers on her knees, Sidonie would seem to be blotted out, as it were, amid the uproar, during the long wait for the evening trains.  From the station, lighted by a single lamp, she could see the black clumps of trees outside, lighted here and there by the last illuminations of the fete, a dark village street, people continually coming in, and a lantern hanging on a deserted pier.

From time to time, on the other side of the glass doors, a train would rush by without stopping, with a shower of hot cinders and the roar of escaping steam.  Thereupon a tempest of shouts and stamping would arise in the station, and, soaring above all the rest, the shrill treble of M. Chebe, shrieking in his sea-gull’s voice:  “Break down the doors! break down the doors!”—­a thing that the little man would have taken good care not to do himself, as he had an abject fear of gendarmes.  In a moment the storm would abate.  The tired women, their hair disarranged by the wind, would fall asleep on the benches.  There were torn and ragged dresses, low-necked white gowns, covered with dust.

The air they breathed consisted mainly of dust.  It lay upon their clothes, rose at every step, obscured the light of the lamp, vexed one’s eyes, and raised a sort of cloud before the tired faces.  The cars which they entered at last, after hours of waiting, were saturated with it also.  Sidonie would open the window, and look out at the dark fields, an endless line of shadow.  Then, like innumerable stars, the first lanterns of the outer boulevards appeared near the fortifications.