the dining-room, so gay with its light
panels relieved by blue bands, its antique mahogany furniture, its large
flower pastels, its brass hanging lamp, always shining. They ate in it
with a hearty appetite and they left it, after each meal, only to go
upstairs again to their dear solitude.

Then when the house seemed too small, they had the garden, all La
Souleiade. Spring advanced with the advancing sun, and at the end of
April the roses were beginning to bloom. And what a joy was this domain,
walled around, where nothing from the outside world could trouble
them! Hours flew by unnoted, as they sat on the terrace facing the
vast horizon and the shady banks of the Viorne, and the slopes of
Sainte-Marthe, from the rocky bars of the Seille to the valley of
Plassans in the dusty distance. There was no shade on the terrace but
that of the two secular cypresses planted at its two extremities, like
two enormous green tapers, which could be seen three leagues away. At
times they descended the slope for the pleasure of ascending the giant
steps, and climbing the low walls of uncemented stones which supported
the plantations, to see if the stunted olive trees and the puny almonds
were budding. More often there were delightful walks under the delicate
needles of the pine wood, steeped in sunshine and exhaling a strong odor
of resin; endless walks along the wall of inclosure, from behind which
the only sound they could hear was, at rare intervals, the grating noise
of some cart jolting along the narrow road to Les Fenouilleres; and they
spent delightful hours in the old threshing yard, where they could see
the whole horizon, and where they loved to stretch themselves, tenderly
remembering their former tears, when, loving each other unconsciously
to themselves, they had quarreled under the stars. But their favorite
retreat, where they always ended by losing themselves, was the quincunx
of tall plane trees, whose branches, now of a tender green, looked like
lacework. Below, the enormous box trees, the old borders of the French
garden, of which now scarcely a trace remained, formed a sort of
labyrinth of which they could never find the end. And the slender stream
of the fountain, with its eternal crystalline murmur, seemed to sing
within their hearts. They would sit hand in hand beside the mossy basin,
while the twilight fell around them, their forms gradually fading into
the shadow of the trees, while the water which they could no l