“I approached the window to look into the garden. It was very big, shady, beautiful. A wide path wound round a grass plot in the midst of which was a fountain, entered a shrubbery and came out farther away. And, suddenly, yonder, in the distance, between two clumps of bushes, three women appeared. They were walking slowly, arm in arm, clad in long, white tea-gowns covered with lace. Two were blondes and the other was dark-haired. Almost immediately they disappeared again behind the trees. I stood there entranced, delighted with this short and charming apparition, which brought to my mind a whole world of poetry. They had scarcely allowed themselves to be seen, in just the proper light, in that frame of foliage, in the midst of that mysterious, delightful park. It seemed to me that I had suddenly seen before me the great ladies of the last century, who were depicted in the engravings on the wall. And I began to think of the happy, joyous, witty and amorous times when manners were so graceful and lips so approachable. “A deep voice male me jump. Patience had come in, beaming, and held out his hands to me. “He looked into my eyes with the sly look which one takes when divulging secrets of love, and, with a Napoleonic gesture, he showed me his sumptuous parlor, his park, the three women, who had reappeared in the back of it, then, in a triumphant voice, where the note of pride was prominent, he said: “'And to think that I began with nothing--my wife and my sister-in-law!'” ABANDONED “I really think you must be mad, my dear, to go for a country walk in such weather as this. You have had some very strange notions for the last two months. You drag me to the seaside in spite of myself, when you have never once had such a whim during all the forty-four years that we have been married. You chose Fecamp, which is a very dull town, without consulting me in the matter, and now you are seized with such a rage for walking, you who hardly ever stir out on foot, that you want to take a country walk on the hottest day of the year. Ask d'Apreval to go with you, as he is ready to gratify all your whims. As for me, I am going back to have a nap.” Madame de Cadour turned to her old friend and said: “Will you come with me, Monsieur d'Apreval?” He bowed with a smile, and with all the gallantry of former years: “I will go wherever you go,” he replied. “Very well, then, go and get a sunstroke,” Monsieur de Cadour said; and he went back to the Hotel des Bains to lie down for an hour or two. As soon as they were alone, the old lady and her old companion set off, and she said to him in a low voice, squeezing his hand: “At last! at last!” “You are mad,” he said in a whisper. “I assure you that you are mad. Think of the risk you are running. If that man--” She started. “Oh! Henri, do not say that man, when you are speaking of him.”