Mornings such as this recurred to his mind. He remembered his life in Rome just two years before. Yes, the sky was of the same shade of blue, the same fresh breeze softened the sun's burning rays in the streets. Carriages rolled along there with the same busy hurry, people walked about wearing the same unconcerned look of amused idleness. And he, Olivier, was one of those promenaders. He remembered just such a morning when he had gone to meet Ely at some appointed place. He had bought some flowers in the Piazza di Spagna to brighten the room where he was to meet her. Moved by that mechanical parody of will which remembrance sometimes calls into action, he entered a florist's in this Rue d'Antibes, which had recalled to him the Roman Corso for a moment. Roses, pinks, narcissus, anemones, mimosa, and violets were piled up in heaps on the counter. Everywhere was displayed the glorious prodigality of the soil which, from Hyères to San Remo, is nothing but a vast garden nestling upon the shores of the sea. The shop was filled with a sweet penetrating odor which resembled the perfumes that enveloped them in their hours of love long ago. The young man carelessly selected a cluster of pinks. He came out again holding them in his hand. And the thought flashed into his mind: "I have no one to whom I can offer them!" As a contrast to this thought the image of his friend and Madame de Carlsberg recurred to him. The thought provoked another sentiment in addition to those of which he had been the prey for some sixteen hours. He felt the most instinctive, the most unreasoning jealousy. He shrugged his shoulders and was just upon the point of flinging the pinks into the road when he thought, in a rush of the ironical self-analysis with which he often found relief for his weary heart:-- "It is your own doing, Georges Dandin," he thought. "I will offer the bouquet to my wife. It will give me an excuse for having gone out without saying good morning." Berthe was seated before her desk, writing a letter in her long, characterless hand, upon a travelling pad, when he entered the salon of their little apartment at the hotel, to carry out his project of marital gallantry,--something very novel for him. Around the blotter a score of tiny knick-knacks were arranged--a travelling clock, portraits in leather frames, an address book, a note pad--all ready as though she had inhabited the room for several weeks, instead of several hours. She was dressed in a tailor-made costume which she had put on with the idea that her husband would certainly return to show her around Cannes. Then, as he was late, she began to reply to overdue correspondence with an apparent calmness that completely deceived Olivier.