ten leagues from Paris the clouds begin to pile up and I get
out of the train amidst a general deluge.

On the occasion of my last visit I found myself as usual in the street,
followed by a street porter carrying my luggage and addressing despairing
signals to all the cabs trotting quickly past amid the driving rain.
After ten minutes of futile efforts a driver, more sensible than the
others, and hidden in his triple cape, checks his horses. With a single
bound I am beside the cab, and opening, the door with a kind of frenzy,
jump in.

Unfortunately, while I am accomplishing all this on one side, a
gentleman, similarly circumstanced, opens the other door and also jumps
in. It is easy to understand that there ensues a collision.

"Devil take you!" said my rival, apparently inclined to push still
farther forward.

I was about to answer him, and pretty sharply, too, for I hail from the
south of France and am rather hotheaded, when our eyes met. We looked one
another in the face like two lions over a single sheep, and suddenly we
both burst out laughing. This angry gentleman was Oscar V., that dear
good fellow Oscar, whom I had not seen for ten years, and who is a very
old friend of mine, a charming fellow whom I used to play with as a boy.

We embraced, and the driver, who was looking at us through the window,
shrugged his shoulders, unable to understand it all. The two porters,
dripping with water, stood, one at each door, with a trunk on his
shoulder. We had the luggage put on the cab and drove off to the Hotel du
Louvre, where Oscar insisted on dropping me.

"But you are travelling, too, then?" said I to my friend, after the first
moments of expansion. "Don't you live in Paris?"

"I live in it as little as possible and have just come up from Les
Roches, an old-fashioned little place I inherited from my father, at
which I pass a great deal of the year. Oh! it is not a chateau; it is
rustic, countrified, but I like it, and would not change anything about
it. The country around is fresh and green, a clear little river flows
past about forty yards from the house, amid the trees; there is a mill in
the background, a spreading valley, a steeple and its weather-cock on the
horizon, flowers under the windows, and happiness in the house. Can I
grumble? My wife makes exquisite pastry, which is very agreeable to me
and helps to whiten her hands. By the way, I did not tell you that I am
married. My dear fellow, I came acros