er too unhappy at the
Jas-Meiffren, she simply answered that she worked hard, and that nothing
had changed. She believed, however, that Justin had at last found out
what made her sing in the morning, and filled her eyes with delight. But
she added: "What does it matter? If ever he comes to disturb us we'll
receive him in such a way that he won't be in a hurry to meddle with our
affairs any more."

Now and again the open country, their long rambles in the fresh air,
wearied them somewhat. They then invariably returned to the Aire
Saint-Mittre, to the narrow lane, whence they had been driven by the
noisy summer evenings, the pungent scent of the trodden grass, all the
warm oppressive emanations. On certain nights, however, the path proved
cooler, and the winds freshened it so that they could remain there
without feeling faint. They then enjoyed a feeling of delightful repose.
Seated on the tombstone, deaf to the noise of the children and gipsies,
they felt at home again. Silvere had on various occasions picked
up fragments of bones, even pieces of skulls, and they were fond of
speaking of the ancient burial-ground. It seemed to them, in their
lively fancies, that their love had shot up like some vigorous plant in
this nook of soil which dead men's bones had fertilised. It had grown,
indeed, like those wild weeds, it had blossomed as blossom the poppies
which sway like bare bleeding hearts at the slightest breeze. And
they ended by fancying that the warm breaths passing over them, the
whisperings heard in the gloom, the long quivering which thrilled the
path, came from the dead folk sighing their departed passions in
their faces, telling them the stories of their bridals, as they turned
restlessly in their graves, full of a fierce longing to live and love
again. Those fragments of bone, they felt convinced of it, were full of
affection for them; the shattered skulls grew warm again by contact with
their own youthful fire, the smallest particles surrounded them with
passionate whispering, anxious solicitude, throbbing jealousy. And when
they departed, the old burial-ground seemed to groan. Those weeds,
in which their entangled feet often stumbled on sultry nights, were
fingers, tapered by tomb life, that sprang up from the earth to detain
them and cast them into each other's arms. That pungent and penetrating
odour exhaled by the broken stems was the fertilising perfume, the
mighty quintessence of life which is slowly elabo