The Angelins, who had become their neighbors, interested the Froments.
The wife was of the same age as Marianne, tall, dark, with fine hair and
fine eyes, radiant with continual joy, and fond of pleasure. And the
husband was of the same age as Mathieu, a handsome fellow, very much in
love, with moustaches waving in the wind, and the joyous spirits of a
musketeer. They had married with sudden passion for one another, having
between them an income of some ten thousand francs a year, which the
husband, a fan painter with a pretty talent, might have doubled had it
not been for the spirit of amorous idleness into which his marriage had
thrown him. And that spring-time they had sought a refuge in that desert
of Janville, that they might love freely, passionately, in the midst of
nature. They were always to be met, holding each other by the waist, on
the secluded paths in the woods; and at night they loved to stroll across
the fields, beside the hedges, along the shady banks of the Yeuse,
delighted when they could linger till very late near the murmuring water,
in the thick shade of the willows.

But there was quite another side to their idyl, and Marianne mentioned it
to her husband. She had chatted with Madame Angelin, and it appeared that
the latter wished to enjoy life, at all events for the present, and did
not desire to be burdened with children. Then Mathieu's worrying thoughts
once more came back to him, and again at this fresh example he wondered
who was right--he who stood alone in his belief, or all the others.

"Well," he muttered at last, "we all live according to our fancy. But
come, my dear, let us go in; we disturb them."

They slowly climbed the narrow road leading to Chantebled, where the lamp
shone out like a beacon. When Mathieu had bolted the front door they
groped their way upstairs. The ground floor of their little house