and Aimee, married only three years, smiled. Jacques and Rose, who
had had twenty-five years of married life, were more serious, but,
surreptitiously, they exchanged tender glances. As for me, I seemed to relive
in those two sweethearts, whose happiness seemed to bring a corner
of Paradise to our table. What good soup we had that evening! Aunt Agathe,
always ready with a witticism, risked several jokes. Then that honest
Pierre wanted to relate his love affair with a young lady of Lyons.
Fortunately, we were at the dessert, and every one was talking at once. I
had brought two bottles of mellowed wine from the cellar. We drank to the
good fortune of Gaspard and Veronique. Then we had singing. Gaspard knew some
love songs in dialect. We also asked Marie for a canticle. She stood up and
sang in a flute-like voice that tickled one's ears.

I went to the window, and Gaspard joined me there.

"Is there no news up your way?" I asked him.

"No," he answered. "There is considerable talk about the heavy rains of the
last few days. Some seem to think that they will cause trouble."

In effect, it had rained for sixty hours without stopping. The Garonne was
very much swollen since the preceding day, but we had confidence in it, and,
as long as it did not overflow its banks, we could not look on it as a bad
neighbor.

"Bah!" I exclaimed, shrugging my shoulders. "Nothing will happen. It is the
same every year. The river puts up her back as if she were furious, and she
calms down in a night. You will see, my boy, that it will amount to nothing
this time. See how beautiful the weather is!"