Ah! what fine soil there is there; rich soil yellow like gold, not like their poor stuff here which smells of sulphur! And the pretty fresh willows beside our stream, too, and the little wood so full of moss! They've no moss here, their trees look like tin under that stupid sun of theirs which burns up the grass.

_Mon Dieu_! in the early times I would have given I don't know what for a good fall of rain to soak me and wash away all the dust.

Ah! I shall never get used to their awful Rome.

What a country and what people!" Pierre was quite enlivened by her stubborn fidelity to her own nook, which after five and twenty years of absence still left her horrified with that city of crude light and black vegetation, true daughter as she was of a smiling and temperate clime which of a morning was steeped in rosy mist.

"But now that your young mistress is dead," said he, "what keeps you here?
Why don't you take the train with me ?" She looked at him in surprise: "Go off with you, go back to Auneau! Oh! it's impossible, Monsieur l'Abbe.