The meal over, the party were free to run and play in the meadows; a few stayed to help the farmer’s wife to put away her earthenware. M. Paul called me from among these to come out and sit near him under a tree⁠—whence he could view the troop gambolling, over a wide pasture⁠—and read to him whilst he took his cigar. He sat on a rustic bench, and I at the tree-root. While I read (a pocket-classic⁠—a Corneille⁠—I did not like it, but he did, finding therein beauties I never could be brought to perceive), he listened with a sweetness of calm the more impressive from the impetuosity of his general nature; the deepest happiness filled his blue eye and smoothed his broad forehead. I, too, was happy⁠—happy with the bright day, happier with his presence, happiest with his kindness.