hand, swinging it with a fine gesture of authority after making sure that all was right. Now having only to make signals to put in motion an electric arrangement of bells, he kept his hand swinging. I fancy no other change had come into the steady life of this rather unsociable old bachelor, who was a poet in his way and a thinker. He did not recognize me, perhaps because he did not take the trouble to look at me; these good country people who are so curious concerning each other are altogether indifferent to strangers. And I was now a stranger indeed, in a region the places of which had been pictured in my childish eyes, beside the old garden I had loved, and before the station that had been intermingled with so many of my memories.
My little bag in my hand, I proceeded toward my father's house.
It rose beside the road, a few moments distant from the little town whose silhouette was blocked out upon a hill. It is an old house to which belongs a farm, with farm buildings. It is two stories high, crude white, with a pent-roof, and green blinds. A beautiful ivy decorates one of the walls, while over the front climbs a singular flower, which my grandmother used to tell of having planted the first year of her married life. It is called the "Passion flower" because its pistils represent the Cross, the nails, and the crown ot thorns in beautiful tints of limpid blue.
