CHAPTER XIX.
HE SEEKS AND BESTOWS THE HAND OF CLEMENTINE.
On the fifth of September, at ten o'clock in the morning, Leon Renault, emaciated, dejected and scarcely recognizable, was at the feet of Clementine Sambucco in her aunt's parlor.

There were flowers on the mantel and flowers in all the vases.

Two great burglar sunbeams broke through the open windows.

A million of little bluish atoms were playing in the light, crossing each other and getting fantastically mixed up, like the ideas in a volume of M.Alfred Houssaye.

In the garden, the apples were falling, the peaches were ripe, the hornets were ploughing broad, deep furrows in the _duchesse_ pears; the trumpet-flowers and clematis-vines were in blossom, and to crown all, a great mass of heliotropes, trained over the left window, was flourishing in all its beauty.