longer conscious of the exhalations of the Parisian stables, on
which the earth of the banlieue fattens, they scented the perfume of
the flowering broom, which the salt breeze of the open sea plucks and
bears away. And the sails of the boats from the river banks seemed like
the white wings of the coasting vessels seen beyond the great plain
which extended from their homes to the very margin of the sea.

They walked with short steps, Luc le Ganidec and Jean Kerderen, content
and sad, haunted by a sweet melancholy, by the lingering, ever-present
sorrow of a caged animal who remembers his liberty.

By the time that Luc had stripped the slender wand of its bark they
reached the corner of the wood where every Sunday they took breakfast.
They found the two bricks which they kept hidden in the thicket, and
kindled a little fire of twigs, over which to roast the blood-pudding
at the end of a bayonet.

When they had breakfasted, eaten their bread to the last crumb, and
drunk their wine to the last drop, they remained seated side by side
upon the grass, saying nothing, their eyes on the distance, their
eyelids drooping, their fingers crossed as at mass, their red legs
stretched out beside the poppies of the field. And the leather of their
helmets and the brass of their buttons glittered in the ardent sun,
making the larks, which sang and hovered above their heads, cease in
mid-song.

Toward noon they began to turn their eyes from time to time in the
direction of the village of Bezons, because the girl with the cow was
coming. She passed by them every Sunday on her way to milk and change
the pasture of her cow--the only cow in this district which ever went
out of the stable to grass. It was pastured in a narrow field along the
edge of the wood a little farther on.

They soon perceived the girl, the only human being within vision, and
were gladdened by the brilliant reflections thrown off by the tin
milk-pail under the rays of the sun. They never talked about her. They
were simply glad to see her, without understanding why.

She was a big strong wench with red hair, burned by the heat of sunny
days, a sturdy product of the environs of Paris.

Once, finding them seated in the same place, she said:

"Good morning. You two are always here, aren't you?"

Luc le Ganidec, the bolder, stammered:

"Yes, we come to rest."

That was all. But the next Sunday she laughed on seeing them, laughed
with a protecting benevolence and a