with the
dealers. He had not the slightest notion of how to do business, and
he was in total ignorance of the power wielded by Gaubertin over the
current of the Yonne,--the main line of conveyance which supplied the
timber of the Paris market.

CHAPTER VII. THE GREYHOUND

Towards the middle of September Emile Blondet, who had gone to Paris to
publish a book, returned to refresh himself at Les Aigues and to think
over the work he was planning for the winter. At Les Aigues, the loving
and sincere qualities which succeed adolescence in a young man's soul
reappeared in the used-up journalist.

"What a fine soul!" was the comment of the count and the countess when
they spoke of him.

Men who are accustomed to move among the abysses of social nature, to
understand all and to repress nothing, make themselves an oasis in the
heart, where they forget their perversities and those of others; they
become within that narrow and sacred circle,--saints; there, they
possess the delicacy of women, they give themselves up to a momentary
realization of their ideal, they become angelic for some one being who
adores them, and they are not playing comedy; they join their soul to
innocence, so to speak; they feel the need to brush off the mud, to
heal their sores, to bathe their wounds. At Les Aigues Emile Blondet
was without bitterness, without sarcasm, almost without wit; he made no
epigrams, he was gentle as a lamb, and platonically tender.

"He is such a good young fellow that I miss him terribly when he is not
here," said the general. "I do wish he could make a fortune and not lead
that Paris life of his."

Never did the glorious landscape and park of Les Aigues seem as
luxuriantly beautiful as it did just then. The first autumn days were
beginning, when the earth, languid from her procreations and delivered
of her products, exhales the delightful odors of vegetation. At this
time the woods, especially, are delicious; they begin to take the russet
warmth of Sienna earth, and the green-bronze tones which form the lovely
tapestry beneath which they hide from the cold of winter.

Nature, having shown herself in springtime jaunty and joyous as a
brunette glowing with hope, becomes in autumn sad and gentle as a blonde
full of pensive memories; the turf yellows, the last flowers unfold
their pale corollas, the white-eyed daisies are fewer in the grass, only
their crimson calices are seen. Yellows abound; the shady places are
l