There Is But One Street, And That,
Not Long Ago, Was A Green Lane, Where The Cattle Browsed Between
The Doorsteps.
As you go up this street, drawing ever nearer the
beginning of the wood, you will arrive at last before an inn where
artists lodge.
To the door (for I imagine it to be six o'clock on
some fine summer's even), half a dozen, or maybe half a score, of
people have brought out chairs, and now sit sunning themselves, and
waiting the omnibus from Melun. If you go on into the court you
will find as many more, some in billiard-room over absinthe and a
match of corks some without over a last cigar and a vermouth. The
doves coo and flutter from the dovecot; Hortense is drawing water
from the well; and as all the rooms open into the court, you can
see the white-capped cook over the furnace in the kitchen, and some
idle painter, who has stored his canvases and washed his brushes,
jangling a waltz on the crazy, tongue-tied piano in the salle-a-
manger. 'Edmond, encore un vermouth,' cries a man in velveteen,
adding in a tone of apologetic afterthought, 'un double, s'il vous
plait.' 'Where are you working?' asks one in pure white linen from
top to toe. 'At the Carrefour de l'Epine,' returns the other in
corduroy (they are all gaitered, by the way). 'I couldn't do a
thing to it. I ran out of white.
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