Thus things went on for three months. I had a pretty room looking into a garden full of flowers; the evening sun shone into the room; I had paper, ink and pens in abundance on my table; the food was good, I looked well enough, and yet I felt I could not possibly continue to live thus.
During one of my Sunday excursions I turned in the direction of Ermenonville. Ermenonville is about six leagues from Crespy, but what were six leagues to such legs as mine! I visited the historic places of M. de Girardin, the desert, the poplar island, the tomb of the Unknown. The poetic side to this pilgrimage revived my poor drooping Muse a little, like a wan, sickly butterfly coming out of its chrysalis in January instead of May. I set to work. I wrote partly in prose, partly in verse, and under the inspiration of a charming young society damsel named Athénaïs--who knew nothing about it-a bad imitation of the _Lettres d'Émilie_ by Demoustier, and of the _Voyages du chevalier Berlin_. I sent the work to Adolphe when it was finished. Since I could not achieve success by the stage, I might perhaps attain it by publishing. I gave it the essentially novel title of _Pélerinage à Ermenonville._ Adolphe, naturally enough, could not do anything with it; he lost it, never found it again, and so much the better. I cannot recollect a single word of it.
As a matter of fact, Adolphe was not succeeding any better than I was. All his hopes fell to the ground, one after another, and he wrote me that we should never do anything unless we were together. But, to be together, it would be necessary to leave Crespy for Paris, and how was this to be done, in the state of my purse, which even on those happy days when my mother sent me some money never contained more than eight or ten francs.
So it was a material impossibility. But infinite are the mysteries of Providence. One Saturday in the month of November, M. Lefèvre announced to us in his usual fashion--by ordering Pierre to have the horses ready by seven next morning--that he was going to pay one of his monthly visits to Paris. Almost simultaneously with his giving this order, at the conclusion of dinner (another of his habits), the cook came and told me a friend wanted to see me. I went out. It was Paillet, my old head clerk; like myself, he had left Maître Mennesson. He was living temporarily on his farm at Vez, where he lodged in the top of a tower, compared with which the tower of Madame Marlborough, however vaunted it may be, is a mere trifle. The tower of Vez was really wonderful, the only remains left standing of a stout castle of the twelfth century--the ancient nest of vultures now peopled by rooks. Paillet had come over on horseback, to learn the price of corn, I believe. He was from time to time head clerk in the provinces or second clerk in Paris; but his real business, his actual life, was that of a property-owner. We took a turn round the ramparts. I was in full tide of pouring out my grievances to this good friend, who loved me so devotedly, and who sympathised with me to the utmost, when, all of a sudden, I struck my forehead and burst out with--