were still damp with it. It had wet the new-grown leaves of the
chestnuts and acacias that bordered the street. The scent of that living
green blended with the scent of laid dust and the fragrance of the last
late-clinging chestnut blossoms; it caught up a fuller, richer burden
from the overflowing front of a florist's shop; it stole from open
windows a savory whiff of cooking, a salt tang of wood smoke; and the
soft little breeze--the breeze of coming summer--mixed all together and
tossed them and bore them down the long, quiet street; and it was the
breath of Paris, and it shall be in your nostrils and mine, a keen agony
of sweetness, so long as we may live and so wide as we may
wander--because we have known it and loved it--and in the end we shall
go back to breathe it when we die.

The strong white horse jogged evenly along over the wooden pavement, its
head down, the little bell at its neck jingling pleasantly as it went.
The cocher, a torpid, purplish lump of gross flesh, pyramidal, pearlike,
sat immobile in his place. The protuberant back gave him an
extraordinary effect of being buttoned into his fawn-colored coat wrong
side before. At intervals he jerked the reins like a large strange toy,
and his strident voice said:

"Hé!" to the stout white horse, which paid no attention whatever. Once
the beast stumbled and the pearlike lump of flesh insulted it, saying:

"Hé! veux tu, cochon!"

Before the War Office a little black slip of a milliner's girl dodged
under the horse's head, saving herself and the huge box slung to her arm
by a miracle of agility, and the cocher called her the most frightful
names, without turning his head and in a perfunctory tone quite free