If you wish for sincere, straightforward passion, if you wish for effusive demonstrations of affection, laughter, the laughter of great happiness, which differs from tears only in a very slight movement of the mouth, if you wish for the fascinating folly of youth illumined by bright eyes, so transparent that you can look to the very bottom of the soul, there are all of those to be seen this Sunday morning in a house that you know, a new house on the outskirts of the old faubourg. The show-case on the ground-floor is more brilliant than usual. The signs over the door dance about more airily than ever, and through the open windows issue joyous cries, a soaring heavenward of happiness.

"Accepted, it's accepted! Oh! what luck! Henriette, Élise, come, come! M. Maranne's play is accepted."

AndrÉ has known the news since yesterday. Cardailhac, the manager of the NouveautÉs, sent for him to inform him that his play would be put in rehearsal at once and produced next month. They passed the evening discussing the stage setting, the distribution of parts; and, as it was too late to knock at his neighbors' door when he returned from the theatre, he waited for morning with feverish impatience, and as soon as he heard signs of life below, the blinds thrown back against the house-front, he hurried down to tell his friends the good news. And now they are all together, the young ladies in modest dÉshabillÉ, their hair hastily braided, and M. Joyeuse, whom the announcement had surprised in the act of shaving, presenting an astonishing bipartite face beneath his embroidered night-cap, with one side shaved, the other not. But the most excited of all is AndrÉ Maranne, for you know what the acceptance of RÉvolte meant to him, what agreement Grandmamma had made with him. The poor fellow looks at her as if seeking encouragement in her eyes; and those eyes, kindly as always, and with a slight suggestion of raillery, seem to say to him: "Try, at all events. What do you risk?" He also glances, in order to give himself courage, at Mademoiselle Élise, pretty as a flower, her long lashes lowered. At last, making a bold effort, he says, in a choking voice:

"Monsieur Joyeuse, I have a very serious communication to make to you."

M. Joyeuse is surprised.

"A communication? Mon Dieu! you terrify me."

And he too lowers his voice as he adds:

"Are these young ladies in the way?"

No. Grandmamma knows what is going on. Mademoiselle Élise, too, must have a suspicion. That leaves only the children. Mademoiselle Henriette and her sister are requested to retire, which they do at once, the former with a majestic, annoyed air, like a worthy descendant of the Saint-Amands, the other, the little monkey Yaia, with a wild desire to laugh, dissembled with difficulty.

Profound silence ensues. Then the lover begins his little story.

I should say that Mademoiselle Élise does in very truth suspect something, for as soon as their young neighbor spoke of a "communication," she had taken her Ansart et Rendu from her pocket and plunged madly into the adventures of a certain Le Hutin, an exciting passage which made the book tremble in her fingers. Surely there is cause for trembling in the dismay, the indignant amazement with which M. Joyeuse welcomes this request for his daughter's hand.

"Is it possible? How did this come about? What an extraordinary thing! Whoever would have suspected anything of the sort!"

And suddenly the good man bursts into a roar of laughter. Well, no, that is not true. He has known what was going on for a long while; some one told him the whole story.

Father knows the whole story! Then Grandmamma must have betrayed them. And the culprit comes forward smiling to meet the reproachful glances that are turned in her direction.

"Yes, my dears, I did. The secret was too heavy. I could not keep it all by myself. And then father is so dear, one cannot conceal anything from him."

As she says this, she leaps on the little man's neck, but it is large enough for two, and when Mademoiselle Élise takes refuge there in her turn, there is an affectionate, fatherly hand extended to him whom M. Joyeuse looks upon thenceforth as his son.

Silent embraces, long searching glances, melting or passionate, blissful moments which one would like to detain forever by the tips of their fragile wings! They talk, they laugh softly as they recall certain incidents. M. Joyeuse tells how the secret was revealed to him at first by rapping spirits, one day when he was alone in AndrÉ's room. "How is business, Monsieur Maranne?" the spirits inquired, and he answered in Maranne's absence: "Not so bad for the season, Messieurs Spirits." You should see the mischievous air with which the little man repeats: "Not so bad for the season," while Mademoiselle Élise, sadly confused at the thought that it was her father with whom she was corresponding that day, disappears beneath her flaxen curls.

After the first excitement has passed and their voices are steady once more, they talk more seriously. It is certain that Madame Joyeuse, nÉe de Saint-Amand, would never have consented to the marriage. AndrÉ Maranne is not rich, far less of noble blood; but luckily the old book-keeper has not the same ideas of grandeur that his wife had. They love each other, they are young, healthy and virtuous, qualities which constitute a handsome dowry and one which the notary will not make a heavy charge for recording. The new household will take up its abode on the floor above. They will continue the photographing business unless the receipts from RÉvolte are enormous. (The Imaginaire can be trusted to attend to that.) In any event, the father will be always at hand, he has a good place with his broker and some expert work at the Palais de Justice; if the small vessel sails always in the wake of the larger one, all will go well, with the help of the waves, the wind and the stars.

A single question disturbs M. Joyeuse: "Will AndrÉ's parents consent to this marriage? How can Dr. Jenkins, rich and famous as he is—"

"Let us not speak of that man," exclaims AndrÉ, turning pale; "he's a miserable villain to whom I owe nothing, who is nothing to me."

He pauses, a little embarrassed by this explosion of wrath, which he could not hold back and cannot explain, and continues in a milder tone:

"My mother, who comes to see me sometimes, although she has been forbidden to do so, was the first to be informed of our plans. She already loves Mademoiselle Élise like her own daughter. You will see, Mademoiselle, how good she is, and how lovely and charming. What a misfortune that she belongs to such a vile man, who tyrannizes over her and tortures her so far as to forbid her mentioning her son's name!"

Poor Maranne heaves a sigh which tells the whole story of the great sorrow he conceals in the depths of his heart. But what melancholy can endure before the dear face illumined by fair curls and the radiant outlook for the future? The serious questions decided, they can open the door and recall the banished children. In order not to fill those little heads with thoughts beyond their years, they have agreed to say nothing of the prodigious event, to tell them nothing except that they must dress in haste and eat their breakfast even more hurriedly, so that they can pass the afternoon at the Bois, where Maranne will read his play to them, awaiting the hour to go to Suresnes for a fish-dinner at Kontzen's; a long programme of delights in honor of the acceptance of RÉvolte and of another piece of good news which they shall know later.

"Ah! indeed. What can it be?" query the two children with an innocent air.

But if you fancy that they do not know what is in the wind, if you think that, when Mademoiselle Élise struck three blows on the ceiling, they believed that she did it for the special purpose of inquiring about the photographing business, you are even more ingenuous than PÈre Joyeuse.

"Never mind, never mind, mesdemoiselles. Go and dress."

Thereupon another refrain begins:

"What dress must I wear, Grandmamma? The gray?"

"Grandmamma, there's a ribbon gone from my hat."

"Grandmamma, my child, I haven't any starched cravat."

For ten minutes there is a constant going and coming around the charming Grandmamma, constant appeals to her. Every one needs her, she keeps the keys to everything, distributes the pretty, finely fluted white linen, the embroidered handkerchiefs, the best gloves, all the treasures which, when produced from bandboxes and cupboards and laid out upon the beds, spread throughout a house the sunshiny cheerfulness of Sunday.

The laboring men, the people who work with their hands, alone know the joy that comes with the end of each week, consecrated by the custom of a nation. For those people, prisoners throughout the week, the crowded lines of the almanac open at equal intervals in luminous spaces, in refreshing whiffs of air. Sunday, the day that seems so long to worldly people, to the Parisians of the boulevard, whose fixed habits it deranges, and so melancholy to exiles without a family, is the day which constitutes to a multitude of people the only recompense, the only goal of six days of toil. Neither rain nor hail makes any difference to them; nothing will prevent them from going out, from closing the door of the deserted workshop or the stuffy little lodging behind them. But when the springtime takes a hand, when a May sun is shining as it is shining this morning and Sunday can array itself in joyous colors, then indeed it is the holiday of holidays.

If you would appreciate it to the full, you must see it in the laboring quarters, in those dismal streets which it illumines, which it makes broader by closing the shops, housing the great vans, leaving the space free for the romping of children with clean faces and in their best clothes, and games of battledore mingled with circling flocks of swallows under some porch in old Paris. You must see it in the swarming, fever-stricken faubourgs where from early morning you feel it hovering, soothing and grateful, over the silent factories, passing with the clang of bells and the shrill whistle of the locomotives, which give the impression of a mighty hymn of departure and deliverance arising from all the suburbs. Then you appreciate it and love it.

O thou Parisian Sunday, Sunday of the working man and the humble, I have often cursed thee without reason, I have poured out floods of abusive ink upon thy noisy, effervescent joy, the dusty railway stations filled with thy uproar, and the lumbering omnibuses which thou takest by assault, upon thy wine-shop ballads roared forth in spring-carts bedecked with green and pink dresses, thy barrel-organs wheezing under balconies in deserted court-yards; but to-day, renouncing my errors, I exalt thee and bless thee for all the joy and relief thou bringest to courageous, honorable toil, for the laughter of the children who acclaim thee, for the pride of happy mothers dressing their little ones in thy honor, for the dignity which thou dost keep alive in the dwellings of the lowliest, for the gorgeous apparel put aside for thee in the depths of the old crippled wardrobe; above all I bless thee for all the happiness which thou didst bring in full measure that morning to the great new house on the outskirts of the old faubourg.

The toilets completed, the breakfast hastily swallowed,[3] they are putting on their hats in front of the mirror in the salon. Grandmamma is casting her eye around for the last time, sticking in a pin here, retying a ribbon there, adjusting the paternal cravat; but, while all the little party are pawing the floor impatiently, beckoned out of doors by the beauty of the day, suddenly their gayety is clouded by a ring at the door-bell.

"Suppose we don't go to the door?" the children suggest.

And what relief, what a shout of joy when friend Paul appears!

"Come quick, quick; let us tell you the good news!"

He knew before anybody else that the play was accepted. He had had difficulty enough in making Cardailhac read it, for at the first sight of the "little lines," as he called the verses, he wanted to send the manuscript to the Levantine and her masseur, as he did with all the rubbish that was sent to him. But Paul was careful not to speak of his intervention. As for the other great event, which was not mentioned because of the children, he guessed it without difficulty from the tremulous happiness of Maranne, whose fair hair stood straight on end over his forehead,—because the poet constantly thrust both hands through it, as he always did in his moments of joy,—from the slightly embarrassed demeanor of Élise, and from the triumphant airs of M. Joyeuse, who stood proudly erect in his spotless linen, with all the happiness of his dear ones written on his face.

Grandmamma alone preserved her usual tranquil bearing; but one detected in her, in the zeal with which she waited upon her sister, a more affectionate warmth than usual, a wish to make her attractive. And it was delightful to see that girl of twenty intent upon beautifying another, without envy or regret, with something of the sweet renunciation of a mother celebrating her daughter's young love in memory of her own bygone happiness. Paul saw it, indeed he was the only one who saw it; but, while he gazed in admiration at Aline, he asked himself sadly if there would ever be room in that motherly heart for other than family attachments, for interests outside of the tranquil circle of light in which Grandmamma presided so prettily over the work-table in the evening.

Love, as we know, is a poor blind boy, bereft of speech and hearing as well, and with no other guide than prescience, divination, the nervous faculties of the invalid. Really, it is pitiful to see him wander about, feeling his way, faltering at every step, tapping with his fingers the projections upon which he depends for guidance, with the distrustful awkwardness of an infirm old man. At the very moment when he was mentally casting a doubt upon Aline's susceptibility, Paul, having informed his friends that he was about to leave Paris for a journey of several days, of several weeks perhaps, did not notice the girl's sudden pallor, did not hear the sorrowful exclamation from her discreet lips:

"You are going away?"

He was going away, he was going to Tunis, very uneasy at the idea of leaving his poor Nabob in the midst of his bloodthirsty pack of pursuers; however, Mora's friendship reassured him somewhat, and, moreover, the journey was absolutely necessary.

"And what about the Territoriale?" asked the old book-keeper, always recurring to his fixed idea. "How does that stand? I see that Jansoulet's name is still at the head of the administrative council. Can't you get him out of that Ali Baba's cave? Beware, beware!"

"Ah! I know it, Monsieur Joyeuse. But in order to get out of it with honor, we must have money, much money, must sacrifice two or three millions more; and we haven't them. That is why I am going to Tunis, to try and extort from the bey's rapacity a small portion of the great fortune which he so unjustly withholds. At this moment I have some chance of success, whereas a little later perhaps—"

"Go at once then, my dear boy, and if you return with a bag full of money as I trust you will, attend first of all to the Paganetti gang. Remember that one shareholder less patient than the rest will be enough to blow the whole thing into the air, to demand an inquiry; and you know as well as I what an inquiry would disclose. On reflection," added M. Joyeuse, wrinkling his brow, "I am surprised that Hemerlingue in his hatred of you has not secretly procured a few shares—"

He was interrupted by the concert of maledictions, of imprecations which the name of Hemerlingue always called forth from all those young people, who hated the corpulent banker for the injury he had done their father and for the injury he wished to do the worthy Nabob, who was adored in that household for Paul de GÉry's sake.

"Hemerlingue, the heartless creature! Villain! Wicked man!"

But, amid that chorus of outcries, the Imaginaire worked out his theory of the stout baron becoming a shareholder in the Territoriale in order to drag his enemy before the courts. And we can imagine AndrÉ Maranne's stupefaction, knowing absolutely nothing of the affair, when he saw M. Joyeuse turn toward him, his face purple and swollen with rage, and point his finger at him with these terrible words:

"The greatest rascal here is yourself, monsieur!"

"O papa, papa! what are you saying?"

"Eh? What's that?—Oh! I beg your pardon, my dear AndrÉ. I imagined that I was in the examining magistrate's office, confronting that villain. It's my infernal brain that is forever rushing off to the devil."

A roar of laughter rang out through all the open windows, mingling with the rumbling of innumerable carriages and the chatter of gayly-dressed crowds on Avenue des Ternes; and the author of RÉvolte took advantage of the diversion to inquire if they did not propose to start soon. It was late—the good places in the Bois would all be taken.

"The Bois de Boulogne, on Sunday!" exclaimed Paul de GÉry.

"Oh! our Bois is not the same as yours," replied Aline with a smile. "Come with us, and you will see."

Has it ever happened to you, when you were walking alone and in contemplative mood, to lie flat on your face in the grassy underbrush of a forest, amid the peculiar vegetation, of many and varying species, that grows between the fallen autumn leaves, and to let your eyes stray along the level of the earth before you? Gradually the idea of height vanishes, the interlaced branches of the oaks above your head form an inaccessible sky, and you see a new forest stretching out beneath the other, opening its long avenues pierced by a mysterious green light and lined by slender or tufted shrubs ending in round tops of exotic or wild aspect, stalks of sugar-cane, the graceful rigidity of palms, slender cups holding a drop of water, girandoles bearing little yellow lights which flicker in the passing breeze. And the miraculous feature of it all is that beneath those slender stalks live miniature plants and myriads of insects whose existence, seen at such close quarters, reveals all its mysteries to you. An ant, staggering like a woodcutter under his burden, drags a piece of bark larger than himself; a beetle crawls along a blade of grass stretched like a bridge from trunk to trunk; while, beneath a tall fern standing by itself in a clearing carpeted with velvety moss, some little blue or red creature waits, its antennÆ on the alert, until some other beast, on its way thither by some deserted path, arrives at the rendezvous under the gigantic tree. It is a small forest beneath the large one, too near the ground for the latter to perceive it, too humble, too securely hidden to be reached by its grand orchestra of songs and tempests.

A similar phenomenon takes place in the Bois de Boulogne. Behind those neat, well-watered gravelled paths, where long lines of wheels moving slowly around the lake draw a furrow by constant wear throughout the day, with the precision of a machine, behind that wonderful stage-setting of verdure-covered walls, of captive streams, of flower-girt rocks, the real forest, the wild forest, with its luxuriant underbrush, advances and recedes, forming impenetrable shadows traversed by narrow paths and rippling brooks. That is the forest of the lowly, the forest of the humble, the little forest under the great. And Paul, who knew nothing of the aristocratic resort save the long avenues, the gleaming lake as seen from the back seat of a carriage or from the top of a break in the dust of a return from Longchamps, was amazed to see the deliciously secluded nook to which his friends escorted him.

It was on the edge of a pond that lay mirrorlike beneath the willows, covered with lilies and lentils, with great patches of white here and there, where the sun's rays fell upon the gleaming surface, and streaked with great tendrils of argyronÈtes as with lines drawn by diamond points.

They had seated themselves, to listen to the reading of the play, on the sloping bank, covered with verdure already dense, although made up of slender plants, and the pretty attentive faces, the skirts spread out upon the grass made one think of a more innocent and chaste Decameron in a reposeful atmosphere. To complete the picture of nature at its loveliest, the distant rustic landscape, two windmills could be seen through an opening between the branches, turning in the direction of Suresnes, while, of the dazzling gorgeous vision to be seen at every cross-road in the Bois, naught reached them save a confused endless rumbling, to which they finally became so accustomed that they did not hear it at all. The poet's voice alone, fresh and eloquent, rose in the silence, the lines came quivering forth, repeated in undertones by other deeply-moved lips, and there were murmured words of approval, and thrills of emotion at the tragic passages. Grandmamma, indeed, was seen to wipe away a great tear. But that was because she had no embroidery in her hand.

The first work! That is what RÉvolte was to AndrÉ—the first work, always too copious and diffuse, into which the author tosses first of all a whole lifetime of ideas and opinions, pressing for utterance like water against the edge of a dam, and which is often the richest, if not the best, of an author's productions. As for the fate that awaited it, no one could say what it might be; and the uncertainty that hovered about the reading of the drama added to his emotion the emotion of each of his auditors, the white-robed hopes of Mademoiselle Élise, M. Joyeuse's fanciful hallucinations and the more positive desires of Aline, who was already in anticipation installing her sister in the nest, rocked by the winds but envied by the multitude, of an artist's household!

Ah! if one of those pleasure-seekers circling the lake for the hundredth time, overwhelmed by the monotony of his habit, had chanced to put aside the branches, how surprised he would have been at that picture! But would he have suspected all the passion and dreams and poetry and hope that were contained in that little nook of verdure hardly larger than the denticulated shadow of a fern on the moss?

"You were right, I did not know the Bois," said Paul in an undertone to Aline, as she leaned on his arm.

They were following a narrow sheltered path, and as they talked they walked very rapidly, far in advance of the others. But it was not PÈre Kontzen's terrace nor his crisp fritters that attracted them. No, the noble verses they had heard had carried them to a great height, and they had not yet descended. They walked straight on toward the ever-receding end of the path, which broadened at its extremity into a luminous glory, a dust of sunbeams, as if all the sunshine of that lovely day awaited them at the edge of the woods. Paul had never felt so happy. The light arm resting on his, the childlike step by which his own was guided, would have made life as sweet and pleasant to him as that walk upon the mossy carpet of a green path. He would have told the young girl as much, in words as simple as his feelings, had he not feared to alarm Aline's confidence, caused doubtless by the feeling which she knew that he entertained for another, and which seemed to forbid any thought of love between them.

Suddenly, directly in front of them, a group of equestrians stood out against the bright background, at first vague and indistinct, then taking shape as a man and woman beautifully mounted and turning into the mysterious path among the shafts of gold, the leafy shadows, the myriad specks of light with which the ground was dotted, which they displaced as they cantered forward, and which ran in fanciful designs from the horses' breasts to the Amazon's veil. They rode slowly, capriciously, and the two young people, who had stepped into the bushes, could see perfectly as they passed quite near to them, with a creaking of new leather, a jangling of bits tossed proudly and white with foam as after a wild gallop, two superb horses bearing a human couple compelled to ride close together by the narrowing of the path; he supporting with one arm the flexible form moulded into a waist of dark cloth, she, with her hand on her companion's shoulder and her little head, in profile—hidden beneath the tulle of her half-fallen veil—resting tenderly thereon. That amorous entwining, cradled by the impatience of the steeds, restive under the restraint imposed upon their fiery spirits, that kiss, causing the reins to become entangled, that passion riding through the woods in hunting costume, in broad daylight, with such contempt of public opinion, would have sufficed to betray the duke and Felicia, even though the haughty and fascinating appearance of the Amazon, and the high-bred ease of her companion, his pallid cheeks slightly flushed by the exercise and Jenkins' miraculous pearls, had not already led to their recognition.

It was not an extraordinary thing to meet Mora in the Bois on Sunday. He, like his master, loved to show himself to the Parisians, to keep his popularity alive in all public places; and then the duchess never accompanied him on that day, and he could draw rein without restraint at the little chÂlet of Saint-James, known to all Paris, whose pink turrets peering out among the trees school-boys pointed out to one another with whispered comments. But only a madwoman, a shameless creature like that Felicia, would advertise herself thus, destroy her reputation forever. The sound of hoofs and of rustling bushes dying away in the distance, bent weeds standing erect, branches thrust aside resuming their places—that was all that remained of the apparition.

"Did you see?" Paul was the first to ask.

She had seen and she had understood, despite her virtuous innocence, for a blush overspread her features, caused by the shame we feel for the sins of those we love.

"Poor Felicia!" she whispered, pitying not only the poor abandoned creature who had passed before them, but him as well whom that fall from grace was certain to strike full in the heart. The truth is that Paul de GÉry was in no wise surprised by that meeting, which confirmed some previous suspicions and the instinctive repulsion he had felt for the seductive creature at their dinner-party some days before. But it seemed sweet to him to be pitied by Aline, to feel her sympathy in the increased tenderness of her voice, in the arm that leaned more heavily upon his. Like children who play at being ill for the joy of being petted by their mothers, he allowed the comforter to do her utmost to soothe his disappointment, to talk to him of his brothers, of the Nabob, and of the impending journey to Tunis, a beautiful country, so it was said. "You must write to us often, and write long letters about the interesting things you see and about the place you live in. For we can see those who are far away from us better when we can form an idea of their surroundings."—Chatting thus, they reached the end of the shady path, at a vast clearing where the tumult of the Bois was in full blast, carriages and equestrians alternating, and the crowd tramping in a fleecy dust which gave it, at that distance, the appearance of a disorderly flock of sheep. Paul slackened his pace, emboldened by that last moment of solitude.

"Do you know what I am thinking?" he said, taking Aline's hand; "that any one would enjoy being unhappy for the sake of being comforted by you. But, precious as your sympathy is to me, I cannot allow you to expend your emotion upon an imaginary grief. No, my heart is not broken, but, on the contrary, more alive, more vigorous than before. And if I should tell you what miracle has preserved it, what talisman—"

He placed before her eyes a little oval frame surrounding a profile without shading, a simple pencil sketch in which she recognized herself, surprised to find that she was so pretty, as if reflected in the magic mirror of Love. Tears came to her eyes, although she knew not why,—an open spring whose pulsing flood caused her chaste heart to beat fast.

"This portrait belongs to me. It was made for me. But now, as I am on the point of going away, I am assailed by a scruple. I prefer not to keep it except from your own hands. So take it, and if you find a worthier friend, one who loves you with a deeper, truer love than mine, I authorize you to give it to him."

She had recovered from her confusion, and replied, looking de GÉry in the face with affectionate gravity:

"If I listened to nothing but my heart, I should not hesitate to answer you; for, if you love me as you say you do, I am sure that I love you no less. But I am not free, I am not alone in life,—look!"

She pointed to her father and sisters who were motioning to them in the distance and hurrying to overtake them.

"Even so! And I?" said Paul eagerly. "Have I not the same duties, the same burdens? We are like two widowed heads of families. Will you not love mine as dearly as I love yours?"

"Do you mean it? Is it true? You will let me stay with them? I shall be Aline to you and still be Grandmamma to all our children? Oh! then," said the dear creature, beaming with joy and radiance, "then here is my picture, I give it to you. And, with it, all my heart, and forever."