clouds are sailing! I look at this beautiful country,
and I listen to these good old maids; I admire, and I am interested; and
time passes gently on without my perceiving it.

At last the sun sets, and we have to think of returning. While Madeleine
and Frances clear away the dinner, I walk down to the manufactory to ask
the hour. The merrymaking is at its height; the blasts of the trombones
resound from the band under the acacias. For a few moments I forget
myself with looking about; but I have promised the two sisters to take
them back to the Bellevue station; the train cannot wait, and I make
haste to climb the path again which leads to the walnut-trees.

Just before I reached them, I heard voices on the other side of the
hedge. Madeleine and Frances were speaking to a poor girl whose clothes
were burned, her hands blackened, and her face tied up with bloodstained
bandages. I saw that she was one of the girls employed at the gunpowder
mills, which are built further up on the common. An explosion had taken
place a few days before; the girl's mother and elder sister were killed;
she herself escaped by a miracle, and was now left without any means of
support. She told all this with the resigned and unhopeful manner of one
who has always been accustomed to suffer. The two sisters were much
affected; I saw them consulting with each other in a low tone: then
Frances took thirty sous out of a little coarse silk purse, which was all
they had left, and gave them to the poor girl. I hastened on to that side
of the hedge; but, before I reached it, I met the two old sisters, who
called out to me that they would not return by the railway, but on foot!

I then understood that the money they had meant for the journey had just
been given to the beggar! Good, like evil, is contagious: I run to the
poor wounded girl, give her the sum that was to pay for my own place, and
return to Frances and Madeleine, and tell them I will walk with them.

..........................

I am just come back from taking them home; and have left them delighted
with their day, the recollection of which will long make them happy. This
morning I was pitying those whose lives are obscure and joyless; now, I
understand that God has provided a compensation with every trial. The
smallest pleasure derives from rarity a relish otherwise unknown.
Enjoyment is only what we feel to be such, and the luxurious man feels no
longer: satiety has destroyed his a