My father replied that it was to be found in abundance on the top of the hill, toward Sevres, as well as the great Laserpitium.

“That, too!” repeated the old man more briskly.  “Ah!  I shall go and look for them; I have gathered them formerly on the hillside of Robaila.”

My father proposed to take him.  The stranger accepted his proposal with thanks, and hastened to collect together the plants he had gathered; but all of a sudden he appeared seized with a scruple.  He observed to his companion that the road he was going was halfway up the hill, and led in the direction of the castle of the Dames Royales at Bellevue; that by going to the top he would consequently turn out of his road, and that it was not right he should take this trouble for a stranger.

My father insisted upon it with his habitual good-nature; but, the more eagerness he showed, the more obstinately the old man refused; it even seemed to my father that his good intention at last excited his suspicion.  He therefore contented himself with pointing out the road to the stranger, whom he saluted, and he soon lost sight of him.

Many hours passed by, and he thought no more of the meeting.  He had reached the copses of Chaville, where, stretched on the ground in a mossy glade, he read once more the last volume of Emile.  The delight of reading it had so completely absorbed him that he had ceased to see or hear anything around him.  With his cheeks flushed and his eyes moist, he repeated aloud a passage which had particularly affected him.

An exclamation uttered close by him awoke him from his ecstasy; he raised his head, and perceived the tradesman-looking person he had met before on the crossroad at Viroflay.

He was loaded with plants, the collection of which seemed to have put him into high good-humor.

“A thousand thanks, sir,” said he to my father.  “I have found all that you told me of, and I am indebted to you for a charming walk.”

My father respectfully rose, and made a civil reply.  The stranger had grown quite familiar, and even asked if his young “brother botanist” did not think of returning to Paris.  My father replied in the affirmative, and opened his tin box to put his book back in it.

The stranger asked him with a smile if he might without impertinence ask the name of it.  My father answered that it was Rousseau’s Emile.

The stranger immediately became grave.

They walked for some time side by side, my father expressing, with the warmth of a heart still throbbing with emotion, all that this work had made him feel; his companion remaining cold and silent.  The former extolled the glory of the great Genevese writer, whose genius had made him a citizen of the world; he expatiated on this privilege of great thinkers, who reign in spite of time and space, and gather together a people of willing subjects out of all nations; but the stranger suddenly interrupted him: