Monsieur and Madame had been married for five years. At first they went into society a great deal, and gave dinners. Then gradually they restricted their goings-out and their receptions, and lived almost alone, saying that they were jealous of each other. Madame reproached Monsieur with flirting with the women; Monsieur accused Madame of looking too much at the men. They loved each other much,--that is to say, they quarreled all day long, like a little _bourgeois_ household. The truth is that Madame had not succeeded in society, and that her manners had cost her not a few insults. She was angry with Monsieur for not having been able to impose her upon society, and Monsieur was angry with Madame for having made him ridiculous in the eyes of his friends. They did not confess to each other the bitterness of their feelings, finding it simpler to charge their dissensions to the score of love. Every year, in the middle of June, they started for the country, Madame having, it seems, a magnificent château in Touraine. The personnel was re-enforced with a coachman, two gardeners, a second chambermaid, and some barnyard-scullions. There were cows, peacocks, hens, and rabbits. How delightful! William told me the details of their country life with a bitter and grumbling ill-humor. He did not like the country; the fields, the trees, and the flowers made him tired. Nature was endurable to him only with bar-rooms, race-tracks, bookmakers, and jockeys. He was exclusively Parisian. "Do you know anything more stupid than a chestnut tree?" he often said to me. "Take Edgar, for instance; he is a _chic_ man, a superior man; does he like the country?" I became enthusiastic: "Oh! but the flowers in the broad lawns! And the little birds!" William sneered: "The flowers? They are pretty only on hats and in the millinery shops. And the little birds? Oh, don't talk about them! They prevent you from sleeping in the morning. They sound like bawling children. Oh! no. Oh! no. I have enough of the country. The country is fit only for peasants." And, straightening up, with a noble gesture, he concluded, in a proud voice: "I must have sport. I am not a peasant; I am a sportsman." Nevertheless I was happy, and I awaited the month of June with impatience. Oh! the marguerites in the meadows; the little paths under the trembling leaves; the nests hidden in the ivies against the old walls; and the nightingales on moonlight nights; and the sweet conversations, hand in hand, on the brinks of wells, lined with honeysuckles and carpeted with maiden's-hair and moss; and the bowls of foaming milk; and the broad-brimmed straw hats; and the little chickens; and the masses heard in the village churches, with their towering steeples; and everything that moves and charms you, and makes an impression on your heart, like one of those pretty ballads they sing in the music-halls!