surprise of mistaking herself for a fairy. While her maid was dressing
her hair, she heard Dechartre and Choulette talking under her windows.
She rearranged all the work Pauline had done, and uncovered the line of
her nape, which was fine and pure. She looked at herself in the glass,
and went into the garden.

Dechartre was there, reciting verses of Dante, and looking at Florence:
"At the hour when our mind, a greater stranger to the flesh. . ."

Near him, Choulette, seated on the balustrade of the terrace, his legs
hanging, and his nose in his beard, was still at work on the figure of
Misery on his stick.

Dechartre resumed the rhymes of the canticle: "At the hour when our mind,
a greater stranger to the flesh; and less under the obsession of
thoughts, is almost divine in its visions, . . . ."

She approached beside the boxwood hedge, holding a parasol and dressed in
a straw-colored gown. The faint sunlight of winter enveloped her in pale
gold.

Dechartre greeted her joyfully.

She said:

"You are reciting verses that I do not know. I know only Metastasio.
My teacher liked only Metastasio. What is the hour when the mind has
divine visions?"

"Madame, that hour is the dawn of the day. It may be also the dawn of