hand where he placed his body, and
ready to kiss the mud upon the leather of his boots, because it was
his!

She did the menial work, she kept the shop, she served the customers.
Madame Jupillon rested everything upon her shoulders; and while the
good-natured girl was working and perspiring, the bulky matron, assuming
the majestic, leisurely air of an annuitant, anchored upon a chair in
the middle of the sidewalk and inhaling the fresh air of the street,
fingered and rattled the precious coin in the capacious pocket beneath
her apron--the coin that rings so sweetly in the ears of the petty
tradesmen of Paris, that the retired shopkeeper is melancholy beyond
words at first, because he no longer has the chinking and the tinkling
under his hand.

XII

When the spring came, Germinie said to Jupillon almost every evening:
"Suppose we go as far as the beginning of the fields?"

Jupillon would put on his flannel shirt with red and black squares, and
his black velvet cap; and they would start for what the people of the
quarter call "the beginning of the fields."

They would go up the Chaussee Clignancourt, and, with the flood of
Parisians from the faubourg hurrying to drink a little fresh air, would
walk on toward the great patch of sky that rose straight from the
pavements, at the top of the ascent, between the two lines of houses,
unobstructed except by an occasional omnibus. The air was growing cooler
and the sun shone only upon the roofs of the houses and the chimneys. As
from a great door opening into the country, there came from the end of
the street and from the sky beyond, a breath of boundless space and
liberty.

At the Chateau-Rouge they found the first tree, the first foliage. Then,
at Rue du Chateau, the horizon opened before them in dazzling beauty.
The fields stretched away in the distance, glistening vaguely in the
powdery, golden haze of seven o'clock. All nature trembled in the
daylight dust that the day leaves in its wake, upon the verdure it blots
from sight and the houses it suffuses with pink.

Frequently they descended the footpath covered with the figures of the
game of hop-scotch marked out in charcoal, by long walls with an
occasional overhanging branch, by lines of detached houses with gardens
between. At their left rose tree-tops filled with light, clustering
foliage pierced by the beams of the setting sun, which cast lines of
fire across the bars of the iron gateways. After the garde