In the little wood near the village her father had to get out and pluck a flower for her, which he could not see and which she pointed out to him growing on the edge of the ditch. The carriage passed by the little inn, the first houses, the grocer's, the blacksmith's, the large walnut-tree, the church, the watchmaker's, who was also a dealer in curiosities, and the Pigeau farm. The villagers were out in the fields. Some children who were tormenting a wet cat stopped to see the carriage drive past. An old man, seated on a bench in front of his cottage door, with a woollen shawl wrapped round him and shivering in spite of the sun, lifted his cap. Then the horses stopped, the carriage door was opened, and a man who was waiting in front of the lodge lifted Mlle. Mauperin up in his arms. "Oh, our poor young lady; she's no heavier than a feather!" he said. "How do you do, Chretiennot--how do you do, comrade?" said M. Mauperin, shaking hands with the old gardener, who had served under him in his regiment. XLVII The next day and the days which followed, Renee had the most delicious waking moments, when the light which was just breaking, the morning of the earth and sky, mingled--in the dawn of her thoughts--with the morning of her life. Her first memories came back to her with the first songs outdoors. The young birds woke up in their nests, awakening her childhood. Supported and indeed almost carried by her father, she insisted on seeing everything again--the garden, the fruit-trees on the walls, the meadow in front of the house, the shady canals, the pool with its wide sheet of still water. She remembered all the trees and the garden paths again, and they seemed to her like the things one gradually recalls of a dream. Her feet found the way along paths which she used to know and which were now grown over with trees. The ruins seemed as many years older to her as she was older since she had last seen them. She remembered certain places on the grass where she had seen the shadow of her frock when as a child she had been running there. She found the spot where she had buried a little dog. It was a white one, named _Nicolas Bijou_. She had loved it dearly, and she could remember her father carrying it about in the kitchen garden after it had been washed. There were hundreds of souvenirs, too, for her in the house. Certain corners in the rooms had the same effect on her as toys that have been stored away in a garret, and that one comes across years after. She loved to hear the sound of the mournful old weather-cock on the house-top, which had always soothed her fears and lulled her to sleep as a child. She appeared to rouse up and to revive. The change, her natal air, and these souvenirs seemed to do her good. This improvement lasted some weeks.