"Oh! I believe you--you are very brave; but coward me prefers spring to winter. Oh! the spring, Madame Martial, the spring! when the leaves burst forth; when the pretty wood-flowers blossom, which smell so good--so good, that the air is perfumed. Then it is that your children will tumble gayly on the new grass, and the forest will become so thick and bushy, that your house can hardly be seen for the foliage; I think I can see it from here. There is a bower before the door that your husband has planted, which shades the seat of turf where he sleeps during the heat of the day, while you go and come, and tell the children not to wake their father. I do not know if you have remarked it, but at noon in the middle of summer, it is as silent in the woods as during the night. Not a leaf stirs, not a bird is heard to sing." "That is true," repeated La Louve, mechanically, who, forgetting more and more the reality, believed almost that she saw displayed before her eyes the smiling pictures described by the poetic imagination of Fleur-de-Marie, instinctively a lover of the beauties of nature. Delighted with the profound attention which her companion lent her, she continued, allowing herself to be carried away by the charm of the thoughts she evoked. "There is one thing that I like almost as well as the silence of the woods; it is the patter of the large drops of rain in the summer, falling on the leaves; do you like this also?" "Oh yes--I like also, very much, the summer rain." "When the trees, moss, and grass are all well moistened, what a fine fresh odor! And then, how the sun, peeping through the trees, makes all the drops of water sparkle which hang from the leaves after the shower. Have you remarked this also?" "Yes, but I didn't remember it till you told it me. How droll it is! you tell it so well, La Goualeuse, that one seems to see everything as you speak; and--I do not know how to explain this to you; but what you have said--smells good--is refreshing--like the summer rain of which you spoke." Thus, like the beautiful and the good, poetry is often contagious. La Louve's brutal and savage nature had to submit in everything to the influence of Fleur-de-Marie. She added, smiling, "We must not believe that we are alone in loving the summer rain. How happy the birds are! how they shake their wings in warbling joyously--not more joyously, however, than your children, free, gay, and lively as they are: see how, at the close of day, the youngest runs through the woods to meet his brother, who brings the heifers from the pasture; they soon heard the tinkling of their bells." "Why, La Goualeuse, it seems to me that I can see the smallest, yet the boldest, who has been placed by his brother, who sustains him, astride the back of one of the cows." "And one would say that the poor beast knew what burden she was bearing, she walks with so much precaution.