He took her arm again and they returned to the town thus, arm in arm
like good friends, while the glow of the sunset was slowly fading away
in a tranquil sea of violets and roses. And seeing them both pass
again, the ancient king, powerful and gentle, leaning against the
shoulder of a charming and docile girl, supported by her youth, the
women of the faubourg, sitting at their doors, looked after them with
a smile of tender emotion.

At La Souleiade Martine was watching for them. She waved her hand to
them from afar. What! Were they not going to dine to-day? Then, when
they were near, she said:

"Ah! you will have to wait a little while. I did not venture to put on
my leg of mutton yet."

They remained outside to enjoy the charm of the closing day. The pine
grove, wrapped in shadow, exhaled a balsamic resinous odor, and from
the yard, still heated, in which a last red gleam was dying away, a
chillness arose. It was like an assuagement, a sigh of relief, a
resting of surrounding Nature, of the puny almond trees, the twisted
olives, under the paling sky, cloudless and serene; while at the back
of the house the clump of plane trees was a mass of black and
impenetrable shadows, where the fountain was heard singing its eternal
crystal song.

"Look!" said the doctor, "M. Bellombre has already dined, and he is
taking the air."

He pointed to a bench, on which a tall, thin old man of seventy was