They skirted the happy little town, and made for a part of the chestnut forest declared by Alphonse to be suitable for picnics. Here, beneath the trees on the edge of the sunlight, the basket was deposited on the greensward, and Gaillard flung himself down to rest.
“I will leave you here,” said Toto, “to get the things ready, and I will take Célestin to the hill-top to see the view.”
“Leave me, then, your cigarette case,” murmured Gaillard, his hat over his eyes, and his arms flung out on either side; “and do not be long, Désiré, for I am famished.”
From the hill of Montmorency the whole world of April lay before them, in its midst Paris, the city of light, sixteen miles away, cream-colored and drab; Paris the noisy, silent amidst all that silent country stretching away in billows of tender green to the sky of pale and wonderful blue.
“Oh, _ciel_!” sighed Célestin, removing her gloves as she sat by Toto, and folding them carefully inside out and putting them in her pocket. “Can that be Paris, that little place? my thumb covers it when I hold it so. And, oh, the sky!—it seems to stretch to heaven. How happy the world is!”
“Do you find it happy?” asked Toto, tearing up wild violets and flinging them away to keep his hands employed.
“Yes,” said Célestin, breathing the word out in a manner that made it a prayer of praise.
“But you are not rich—you are like me; and they say the rich see more of the pleasure of the world than we do. Tell me, would you like to be a great lady, one of those one sees in the Bois?”
“Oh, no!” said Célestin; “I would much rather be myself.”
“But!” said Toto, tearing a daisy’s head off, “imagine having money to spend, as much as one wanted.”
“That would be nice; at least, I would sooner, I think, go in omnibuses—one would be very desolate all alone in a carriage. It is the people who make omnibuses so delightful; one wonders where they are going to and what they have in their baskets; and some read books, and one tries to imagine what they read of. And then the hats one sees! they make one want to laugh and weep. Sometimes they are not so bad, but sometimes they are frightful; often have I wished to say, ‘Madame, let me retrim your hat; I will do it for love, and use my own thread,’ but I have never dared.”