At eight in summer evenings, at six in winter, our young friends, also free when I was, came to join us at some convenient meeting-place; held out their faces or their cheeks to be kissed, pressed our hands, without taking pains, out of mistaken coquetry or hypocritical make-belief, to conceal their delight at meeting us once more; then, if it were summertime, and fine weather, the park invited us with its mossy sward, its dusky avenues, the breeze trembling among the leaves, and on moonlight nights there were wide spaces of alternate light and darkness; at these times a solitary passer-by could have seen five or six couples walking, at duly specified distances, to ensure isolation without loneliness, heads inclined towards one another, hands clasped in hands, talking in low tones, modulating their words to sweet intonations, or preserving a dangerous silence; for during such silences the eyes often spoke what the lips did not dare to utter. If it were winter or bad weather, we all met at Louise Brézette's: her mother and her aunt nearly always withdrew to the back room, giving up to us the two front ones, which we seized upon for ourselves; then, lit by a single lamp in the third room, near which Louise's mother would sew while her aunt read the _Imitation of Christ_ or _The Perfect Christian_ we chatted, squeezed against one another, generally two on one chair, repeating the same story we had said the night before, but finding what we had to say ever new. At ten o'clock our _soirées_ broke up. Each boy took his particular girl home. When they reached the house door, she granted her cavalier another half-hour, sometimes an hour, as sweet to her as to him, as they sat together on the bench outside the door, or stood in the garden path which led to the maternal parlour, from the interior of which from time to time a grumbling voice might be heard calling--a voice that was answered ten times before being obeyed, "I am coming, mamma." On Sundays we met at three o'clock, after vespers; and we walked, danced, waltzed, not going home until midnight. Then there were fêtes in the neighbouring villages, less grand, less aristocratic, less fashionable, certainly, than those of Villers-Cotterets, to which we went in happy bands, and from which we returned in silent separate pairs. It was at one of these fêtes that I met a young man a year younger than myself. I must ask permission to speak of him fully, for he had an immense influence over my life. CHAPTER III Adolphe de Leuven--His family--Unpublished details concerning the death of Gustavus III.--The Count de Ribbing--The shoemakers of the château de Villers-Hellon