Now comes evening; and it is time for us both, here forking about with our fruit-hooks on the literary Tree of Knowledge, at the risk of our necks, to clamber down again into the meadow-flowers and pasturages of rural joy. We wait, however, till the busy Thiennette, whom we are now to receive into our communion, has no more walks to take but the one between us. Then slowly we stept along (the sick lady was weak) through the office-houses; that is to say, through stalls and their population, and past a horrid lake of ducks, and past a little milk-pond of carps, to both of which colonies, I and the rest, like princes, gave bread, seeing we had it in view, on the Sunday after the christening, to--take them for bread for ourselves.
The sky is still growing kindlier and redder, the swallows and the blossom-trees louder, the house-shadows broader, and men more happy. The clustering blossoms of the acacia-grove hang down over our cold collation; and the ham is not stuck (which always vexes me) with flowers, but beshaded with them from a distance....
And now the deeper evening and the nightingale conspire to soften me; and I soften in my turn the mild beings round me, especially the pale Thiennette, to whom, or to whose heart, after the apoplectic crushings of a down-pressed youth, the most violent pulses of joy are heavier than the movements of pensive sadness. And thus beautifully runs our pure transparent life along, under the blooming curtains of May; and in our modest pleasure, we look with timidity neither behind us nor before; as people who are lifting treasure gaze not round at the road they came, or the road they are going.
So pass our days. To-day, however, it was different; by this time, usually, the evening meal is over; and the Shock has got the osseous-preparation of our supper between his jaws; but to-night I am still sitting here alone in the garden, writing the Eleventh Letter-Box, and peeping out every instant over the meadows, to see if my gossip is not coming.
For he is gone to town, to bring a whole magazine of spiceries; his coat-pockets are wide. Nay, it is certain enough that oftentimes he brings home with him, simply in his coat-pocket, considerable flesh-tithes from his Guardian, at whose house he alights; though truly, intercourse with the polished world and city, and the refinement of manners thence arising--for he calls on the bookseller, on school-colleagues, and several respectable shop-keepers--does, much more than flesh-fetching, form the object of these journeys to the city. This morning he appointed me regent-head of the house, and delivered me the _fasces_ and _curule chair_. I sat the whole day beside the young, pale mother; and could not but think, simply because the husband had left me there as his representative, that I liked the fair soul better. She had to take dark colors, and paint out for me the winter landscape and ice region of her sorrow-wasted youth; but often, contrary to my intention, by some simple elegiac word, I made her still eye wet; for the too full heart, which had been crushed with other than sentimental woes, overflowed at the smallest pressure. A hundred times in the recital I was on the point of saying: "O yes, it was with winter that your life began, and the course of it has resembled winter!"--Windless, cloudless day! Three more words about thee the world will still not take amiss from me!