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 everything would fade away, be blotted out, lose its form and color in a dying remnant of colorless daylight, and through the increasing darkness the voices of a class whose life begins at night, and the voice of the wine beginning to sing, would arise, mingled with the din of the rattles. Upon the slope the tops of the tall grass waved to and fro in the gentle breeze. Germinie would make up her mind to go. She would wend her way homeward, filled with the influence of the falling night, abandoning herself to the uncertain vision of things half-seen, passing the dark houses, and finding that everything along her road had turned paler, as it were--wearied by the long walk over rough roads, and content to be weary and slow and half-fainting, and with a feeling of peace at her heart. At the first lighted lanterns on Rue du Chateau, she would fall from her dream to the pavement. XIII