the market-garden, and appropriating
the ground to the culture of flowers. Like the maniacs of England, or
of Holland, I gave it out that I was devoted to one kind of flower, and
especially grew dahlias, collecting every variety. You will understand
that my conduct, even in the smallest details, was laid down for me by
the Count, whose whole intellectual powers were directed to the most
trifling incidents of the tragi-comedy enacted in the Rue Saint-Maur. As
soon as the Countess had gone to bed, at about eleven at night, Octave,
Madame Gobain, and I sat in council. I heard the old woman's report to
the Count of his wife's least proceedings during the day. He inquired
into everything: her meals, her occupations, her frame of mind, her
plans for the morrow, the flowers she proposed to imitate. I understood
what love in despair may be when it is the threefold passion of the
heart, the mind, and the senses. Octave lived only for that hour.

"During two months, while my work in the garden lasted, I never set
eyes on the little house where my fair neighbor dwelt. I had not even
inquired whether I had a neighbor, though the Countess' garden was
divided from mine by a paling, along which she had planted cypress trees
already four feet high. One fine morning Madame Gobain announced to her
mistress, as a disastrous piece of news, the intention, expressed by
an eccentric creature who had become her neighbor, of building a wall
between the two gardens, at the end of the year. I will say nothing of
the curiosity which consumed me to see the Countess! The wish almost
extinguished my budding love for Amelie de Courteville. My scheme for
building a wall was indeed a dangerous threat. There would be no more
fresh air for Honorine, whose garden would then be a sort of narrow
alley shut in between my wall and her own little house. This dwelling,
formerly a summer villa, was like a house of cards; it was not more
than thirty feet deep, and about a hundred feet long. The garden front,
painted in the German fashion, imitated a trellis with flowers up to the
second floor, and was really a charming example of the Pompadour style,
so well called rococo. A long avenue of limes led up to it. The gardens
of the pavilion and my plot of ground were in the shape of a hatchet, of
which this avenue was the handle. My wall would cut away three-quarters
of the hatchet.

"The Countess was in despair.

"'My good Gobain,' said she, 'what sort of man is t