When I reached the Pavilion, Franzius and Eloise were not there. Madame Ancelot said they had taken money and food with them, and "gone off." They often did this, sometimes for a couple of days: the gipsy that was in Franzius' feet required a change. This strange pair, who were now more than ever like lovers, would "go off," spend days in the open, and stop at village inns at night. Franzius had infected his companion with the love of freedom. He was now famous. Another man in his position would have been at Biarritz or Trouville, basking in the social sun, but the only sun desired by Franzius was the sun of heaven. He refused to be lionised. A Bohemian to the ends of his fingers, a gipsy to the soles of his boots, brown as a berry with the sun and open air, carrying his violin under his arm: had you met him on a country road, you would never have suspected him to be Franzius, the composer of "Undine," who, had he chosen, could, with a few sweeps of his bow on a concert platform, have gained two thousand francs on a summer's afternoon. "They did not say when they would be back?" "No," replied Madame Ancelot; "but they won't be back to-day, or maybe to-morrow: they took a ham with them." "Ah!" "And a chicken. It was in a basket that madame carried. They went a way through the woods, but that leads everywhere; and one can't say whether they passed last night at Champrosay or at some cottage. For myself, I believe they sometimes sleep in the woods, and don't trouble about houses at all." To sleep in God's open air seemed the last act of madness to Madame Ancelot, who, a peasant born and bred, was accustomed, by experience and from tradition, to sleep in a bedroom almost hermetically sealed. I had myself suspected the Franzius' of sleeping on occasion in barns and hayricks, but I said nothing. I was depressed at not finding the two people I loved most on earth, for it was now quite beyond chance that I would meet them before to-morrow morning; and after to-morrow morning---- Ah, well--after to-morrow morning---- I left the Pavilion and walked into the château gardens. These gardens, beloved by Eloise, kept our house in the Place Vendôme supplied with flowers. They were very old. M. de Sartines and M. de Maupeon had walked here amidst the roses, discussing State intrigues; the full skirts of the Duchesse de Gramont had swept that lawn; and on that stone seat, under the great fig-trees' cave-like shelter, the Princesse de Guemenée had sat amidst brocaded cushions, and there had received the news of the Duc de Choiseul's disgrace; and far beyond that went the history of these walks, these lawns, these fountains playing in the sun; these old, old walls, warmed by the suns of two hundred summers; rich red walls, moss-lined, to which the peach-trees still clung as they had clung when La Vallière was still a girl, when La Fontaine was still a man, and Monsieur Fouquet held his court at Vaux.