id to
her in a low tone: "You are thinking of your husband, baroness. Reassure
yourself; he will not return before Saturday, so you have still four
days."

She answered with a sleepy smile:

"How stupid you are!" Then, shaking off her torpor, she added: "Now, let
somebody say something to make us laugh. You, Monsieur Chenal, who have
the reputation of having had more love affairs than the Due de Richelieu,
tell us a love story in which you have played a part; anything you like."

Leon Chenal, an old painter, who had once been very handsome, very
strong, very proud of his physique and very popular with women, took his
long white beard in his hand and smiled. Then, after a few moments'
reflection, he suddenly became serious.

"Ladies, it will not be an amusing tale, for I am going to relate to you
the saddest love affair of my life, and I sincerely hope that none of my
friends may ever pass through a similar experience.

"I was twenty-five years of age and was pillaging along the coast of
Normandy. I call 'pillaging' wandering about, with a knapsack on one's
back, from inn to inn, under the pretext of making studies and sketching
landscapes. I knew nothing more enjoyable than that happy-go-lucky
wandering life, in which one is perfectly free, without shackles of any
kind, without care, without preoccupation, without thinking even of the
morrow. One goes in any direction one pleases, without any guide save his
fancy, without any counsellor save his eyes. One stops because a running
brook attracts one, because the smell of potatoes frying tickles one's
olfactories on passing an inn. Sometimes it is the perfume of clematis
which decides one in his choice or the roguish glance of the servant at
an inn. Do not despise me for my affection for these rustics. These girls
have a soul as well as senses, not to mention firm cheeks and fresh lips;
while their hearty and willing kisses have the flavor of wild fruit. Love
is always love, come whence it may. A heart that beats at your approach,
an eye that weeps when you go away are things so rare, so sweet, so
precious that they must never be despised.

"I have had rendezvous in ditches full of primroses, behind the cow
stable and in barns among the straw, still warm from the heat of the day.
I have recollections of coarse gray cloth covering supple peasant skin
and regrets for simple, frank kisses, more delicate in their unaffected
sincerity than the subtle favors of charming an