The feverish fatigue which follows a day of giving orders and overlooking others, the spectacle of devastation which he still had before his eyes, and perhaps the state of the atmosphere as well, were ill adapted to soothe the nervous irritation which had become habitual with Monsieur Cardonnet. The temperature had indulged in such a sudden and violent change that the result was abnormal and enervating. The warm air was laden with vapors, as in November, although it was midsummer. But it was not the cool, transparent mist of autumn, but rather a suffocating smoke which exhaled from the ground. The path where the manufacturer strode was bordered on one side by rose-bushes and other brilliant flowers. On the other there were only débris, boards piled in disorder, huge stones brought thither by the water; and from that point, at which the flood had stopped, to the bank of the stream, several acres of garden, covered with black mud streaked with red gravel, resembled an American forest flooded and half-uprooted by the overflow of the Ohio or Mississippi. The young trees that had been overthrown lay with their branches interlaced in pools of stagnant water, which could find no outlet under those fortuitous dikes. Beautiful plants, crushed and besmirched, tried in vain to rise, but remained lying in the mud, while, in the case of some others, the abundant moisture had already caused superb flowers to bloom triumphantly upon half-broken stalks. Their delicious fragrance struggled against the brackish odor of the slime, and when a faint breeze raised the mist, that fragrance and that strange odor reached the nostrils alternately. A multitude of frogs, which seemed to have fallen with the rain, were croaking with disgusting energy among the reeds; and the roar of the factory, which it was not yet possible to stop, so that the machinery was constantly running and wearing itself out uselessly, made Monsieur Cardonnet feverishly impatient. Meanwhile the nightingale sang in the thickets that had been left unharmed, and saluted the full moon with the nonchalance of a lover or an artist. It was a medley of happiness and consternation, of ugliness and beauty, as if omnipotent Nature laughed at losses ruinous to man but trifling to herself, who needed but a day of sunlight and a cool, damp night to repair them.