whatever his hand encounters must suffer when he is angry; his wife,
his child, his servant, his horse, they are all alike to him when he
sees red."

Monsieur Fouchet was tying up his rose-trees; we were watching him from
our seat on the green bench. Here in the garden, beneath the blue
vault, the roses were drooping from very heaviness of glory; they gave
forth a scent that made the head swim. It was a healthy, virile
intoxication, however, the salt in the air steadying one's nerves.

Nature, not being mortal and cursed with a conscience, had risen that
morning in a mood for carousal; at this hour of noon she had reached
the point of ecstatic stupor. No state of trance was ever so exquisite.
The air was swooning, but how delicate its gasps, as if it fell away
into calm! How adorably blue the sky in its debauch of sun-lit ether!
The sea, too, although it reeled slightly, unsteadily rising only to
fall away, what a radiance of color it maintained! Here in the garden
the drowsy air would lift a flower petal, as some dreamer sunk in
hasheesh slumber might touch a loved hand, only to let it slip away in
nerveless impotence. Never had the charm of this Normandy sea-coast
been as compelling; never had the divine softness of this air, this
harmonious marriage of earth-scents and sea-smells seemed as perfect;
never before had the delicacy of the foliage and color-gradations of
the sky as triumphantly proved that nowhere else, save in France, can
nature be at once sensuous and poetic.

We looked for something other than pure enjoyment from this golden
moment; we hoped its beauty would help us to soften our landlord. This
was the moment we had chosen to excite his sympathies, also to gain
counsel from him concerning the tragedy we had witnessed the day