o be. Had its rotundity developed,
like its master's? I stopped and gathered a flower, meaning to analyze
it at my next resting-place. I opened my box: then indeed I perceived
the secret of its weightiness. It revealed three small rolls of
oatmeal toasted, a little roast chicken, a bit of ham, some mustard
in a cleaned-out inkstand! This now was the treachery of Josephine.
Josephine, who never had the least sympathy for my botanical
researches, and who had small comprehension of the nobler hungers and
thirsts of the scientific soul, had taken it on her to convert my box
into a portable meat-safe!

Bless the old meddler, how I thanked her for her treason! The aspect
of the chicken, in its blistered and varnished brown skin, reminded
me that I was clamorously hungry. Shade of Apicius! is it lawful for
civilized mortals to be so hungry as I was at eight or nine in the
morning?

At last I saw the end of that dusty, featureless street which
stretches from the barrier to the extremity of Romainville. I saw
spreading before me a broad plain, a kind of desert, where, by
carefully keeping my eyes straight ahead, I could avoid the sight of
all houses, walls, human constructions whatever.

My favorite traveler, the celebrated Le Vaillant, to whom I am
indebted for so many facts and data toward my great theory of
Comparative Geography, says that in first reaching the solitudes of
Caffraria he felt himself elated with an unknown joy. No traced road
was before him to dictate his pathway--no city shaded him with its
towers: his fortune depended on his own unaided instincts.

I felt the same delight, the same liberty. Something like the heavy
strap of a slave seemed to break behind me as I found myself quite
clear of the metropolis. Mad schemes of unanticipated journeys danced
through my head; I might amble on to Villemonble, Montfermeil, Raincy,
or even to the Forest of Bondy, so dear to the experimental botanist.
Had I not two days before me ere my compact with Hohenfels at Marly?
And in two days you can go from Paris to Florence. Meantime, from the
effects of famine, my ribs were sinking down upon the pelvic basin of
my frame.

The walk, the open air, the sight of the fowl, whose beak now burned
into my bosom's core, had sharpened my appetite beyond bearing. Yet
how could I eat without some drop of cider or soft white wine to
drink? Besides, slave of convention that I have grown, I no longer
understand the business of eating