se linen.
On the other hand, little Jacques, by now two years and a half old, got
on admirably in the country. From morning till night he rolled about
the garden, ragged and dirt-begrimed, but growing as he listed in robust
ruddy health. His mother often did not know where to take hold of him
when she wished to wash him a bit. However, when she saw him eat and
sleep well she did not trouble much; she reserved her anxious affection
for her big child of an artist, whose despondency filled her with
anguish. The situation grew worse each day, and although they lived on
peacefully without any cause for grief, they, nevertheless, drifted to
melancholy, to a discomfort that showed itself in constant irritation.

It was all over with their first delights of country life. Their rotten
boat, staved in, had gone to the bottom of the Seine. Besides, they did
not even think of availing themselves of the skiff that the Faucheurs
had placed at their disposal. The river bored them; they had grown too
lazy to row. They repeated their exclamations of former times respecting
certain delightful nooks in the islets, but without ever being tempted
to return and gaze upon them. Even the walks by the river-side had lost
their charm--one was broiled there in summer, and one caught cold there
in winter. And as for the plateau, the vast stretch of land planted
with apple trees that overlooked the village, it became like a distant
country, something too far off for one to be silly enough to risk one's
legs there. Their house also annoyed them--that barracks where they had
to take their meals amid the greasy refuse of the kitchen, where their
room seemed a meeting-place for the winds from every point of the
compass. As a finishing stroke of bad luck, the apricots had failed that
year, and the finest of the giant rose-bushes, which were very old, had
been smitten with some canker or other and died. How sorely time and
habit wore everything away! How eternal nature herself seemed to age
amidst that satiated weariness. But the worst was that the painter
himself was getting disgusted with the country, no longer finding a
single subject to arouse his enthusiasm, but scouring the fields with
a mournful tramp, as if the whole place were a void, whose life he had
exhausted without leaving as much as an overlooked tree, an unforeseen
effect of light to interest him. No, it was over, frozen, he should
never again be able to paint anything worth looking at in