on their knees, the greasy coats
characteristic of old men, and black hats worn as red as their red
beards. The air was full of rich harmonies. Below her, in the moat, a
musical society was playing at each corner. Before her eyes was a
multi-colored crowd, white blouses, children in blue aprons running
around, a game of riding at the ring in progress, wine shops, cake
shops, fried fish stalls, and shooting galleries half hidden in clumps
of verdure, from which arose staves bearing the tricolor; and farther
away, in a bluish haze, a line of tree tops marked the location of a
road. To the right she could see Saint-Denis and the towering basilica;
at her left, above a line of houses that were becoming indistinct, the
sun was setting over Saint-Ouen in a disk of cherry-colored flame, and
projecting upon the gray horizon shafts of light like red pillars that
seemed to support it tremblingly. Often a child's balloon would pass
swiftly across the dazzling expanse of sky.

They would go down, pass through the gate, walk along by the Lorraine
sausage shops, the dealers in honeycomb, the board _cabarets_, the
verdureless, still unpainted arbors, where a noisy multitude of men and
women and children were eating fried potatoes, mussels and prawns, until
they reached the first field, the first living grass: on the edge of the
grass there was a handcart laden with gingerbread and peppermint
lozenges, and a woman selling hot cocoa on a table in the furrow. A
strange country, where everything was mingled--the smoke from the
frying-pan and the evening vapor, the noise of quoits on the head of a
cask and the silence shed from the sky, the city barrier and the idyllic
rural scene, the odor of manure and the fresh smell of green wheat, the
great human Fair and Nature! Germinie enjoyed it, however; and, urging
Jupillon to go farther, walking on the very edge of the road, she would
constantly step in among the grain to enjoy the fresh, cool sensation of
the stalks against her stockings. When they returned she always wanted
to go upon the slope once more. The sun had by that time disappeared and
the sky was gray below, pink in the centre and blue above. The horizon
grew dark; from green the trees became a dark brown and melted into the
sky; the zinc roofs of the wine shops looked as if the moon were
shining upon them, fires began to appear in the darkness, the crowd
became gray, and the white linen took on a bluish tinge. Little by
little eve