The frankness of this confession interested the young man, who looked with less hostile eyes on Madame Crochard as she slowly made her way back to them. “Well, children, have you had a long talk?” said she, with a half-laughing, half-indulgent air. “When I think, Monsieur Roger, that the ‘little Corporal’ has sat where you are sitting,” she went on after a pause. “Poor man! how my husband worshiped him! Ah! Crochard did well to die, for he could not have borne to think of him where _they_ have sent him!” Roger put his finger to his lips, and the good woman went on very gravely, with a shake of her head: “All right, mouth shut and tongue still! But,” added she, unhooking a bit of her bodice, and showing a ribbon and cross tied round her neck by a piece of black ribbon, “they shall never hinder me from wearing what _he_ gave to my poor Crochard, and I will have it buried with me.” On hearing this speech, which at that time was regarded as seditious, Roger interrupted the old lady by rising suddenly, and they returned to the village through the park walks. The young man left them for a few minutes while he went to order a meal at the best eating-house in Taverny; then, returning to fetch them, he led the way through the alleys cut in the forest. The dinner was cheerful. Roger was no longer the melancholy shade that was wont to pass along the Rue du Tourniquet; he was not the “Black Gentleman,” but rather a confiding young man ready to take life as it came, like the two hard-working women who, on the morrow, might lack bread; he seemed alive to all the joys of youth, his smile was quite affectionate and childlike. When, at five o’clock, this happy meal was ended with a few glasses of champagne, Roger was the first to propose that they should join the village ball under the chestnuts, where he and Caroline danced together. Their hands met with sympathetic pressure, their hearts beat with the same hopes; and under the blue sky and the slanting, rosy beams of sunset, their eyes sparkled with fires which, to them, made the glory of the heavens pale. How strange is the power of an idea, of a desire! To these two nothing seemed impossible. In such magic moments, when enjoyment sheds its reflections on the future, the soul foresees nothing but happiness. This sweet day had created memories for these two to which nothing could be compared in all their past existence. Would the source prove to be more beautiful than the river, the desire more enchanting than its gratification, the thing hoped for more delightful than the thing possessed? “So the day is already at an end!” On hearing this exclamation from her unknown friend when the dance was over, Caroline looked at him compassionately, as his face assumed once more a faint shade of sadness. “Why should you not be as happy in Paris as you are here?” she asked. “Is happiness to be found only at Saint-Leu? It seems to me that I can henceforth never be unhappy anywhere.”