Jean spoke with such conviction, and his black eyes gleamed so bright beneath his grizzly bushy eyebrows, that Emile could not help being moved. He begged him to give his reasons for talking as he did, and the carpenter refused for a long time. At last, conquered by his persistence, and a little irritated by his doubts, he made an appointment with him for the following Sunday. "You can go to Châteaubrun Saturday or Monday instead," he said, "and on Sunday we will start at daybreak and go up the stream to certain places that I will point out to you. Take all your books and all your instruments if you choose. If they don't confirm me, it's of little consequence; it will be science that lies. But don't expect to make this trip on horseback or in a carriage; and if you haven't good legs, don't expect to make it at all." On the following Saturday Emile went to Châteaubrun, beginning, as usual, with Boisguilbault, as he dared not appear too early at Gilberte's. As he approached the ruins he saw a black speck at the foot of the mountain, and that speck soon became Constant Galuchet, in a black coat, black trousers and gloves, black satin cravat and waistcoat. That was his costume in the country, winter and summer alike; and no matter how great the heat or the fatigue which he was about to undergo, he never left the village except in that ceremonious attire. He would have been afraid of resembling a peasant if, like Emile, he had donned a blouse and broad-brimmed gray hat. If it be true that the bourgeois costume of our generation is the most depressing, the most inconvenient and the most unbecoming that fashion ever invented, it is equally true that all its inconveniences and deformities are most striking in the open country. In the outskirts of the large cities, one's eyes are less offended, because everything there is arranged, aligned, planked, built and walled in symmetrically, so that all the informality and charm of nature are destroyed. We may sometimes admire the beauty and symmetry of those estates which have been subjected to all the refinements of civilization; but it is very hard to imagine oneself loving such a region. The real country is not there, but in the heart of the fields, neglected and untilled to some extent, where agriculture has no thought of paltry embellishments and strict limits, where estates run together and where boundaries are indicated only by a stone or bush, put in place in full reliance upon rustic good faith. There the roads, intended only for foot passengers, equestrians or heavy carts, present innumerable picturesque irregularities; the hedges, abandoned to their natural vigor, hang in garlands, from leafy arbors, and deck themselves out with the wild climbing plants which are carefully removed in more pretentious regions. Emile remembered that he had walked about within several leagues of Paris without the pleasure of seeing a nettle, and he felt keenly the