On holidays they together took long walks in the environs of Paris, and dined under an arbor in one of those small country inns where there are a great many mushrooms in the sauces and innocent rebusses on the napkins.
There Jean Francois learned from his friend all that lore of which they who are born in the city are ignorant: learned the names of the trees, the flowers, and the plants; the various seasons for harvesting; he heard eagerly the thousand details of a laborious country life—the autumn sowing, the winter chores, the splendid celebrations of harvest and vintage days, the sound of the mills at the water-side, and the flails striking the ground, the tired horses led to water, and the hunting in the morning mist; and, above all, the long evenings around the fire of vineshoots, that were shortened by some marvelous stories. He discovered in himself a source of imagination before unknown, and found a singular delight in the recital of events so placid, so calm, so monotonous.
One thing troubled him, however: it was the fear lest Savinien might learn something of his past. Sometimes there escaped from him some low word of thieves` slang, a vulgar gesture—vestiges of his former horrible existence—and he felt the pain one feels when old wounds reopen; the more because he fancied that he sometimes saw in Savinien the awakening of an unhealthy curiosity.
When the young man, already tempted by the pleasures which Paris offers to the poorest, asked him about the mysteries of the great city, Jean Francois feigned ignorance and turned the subject; but he felt a vague inquietude for the future of his friend.
Wine shop
His uneasiness was not without foundation. Savinien could not long remain the simple rustic that he was on his arrival in Paris. If the gross and noisy pleasures of the wine-shop always repelled him, he was profoundly troubled by other temptations, full of danger for the inexperience of his twenty years.
When spring came he began to go off alone, and at first he wandered about the brilliant entrance of some dancing- hall, watching the young girls who went in with their arms around each other` waists, talking in low tones. Then, one evening, when lilacs perfumed the air and-.the call to quadrilles was most captivating, he crossed the threshold, and from that time Jean Francois observed a change, little by little, in his manners and his visage. He became more frivolous, more extravagant.
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