Ah, this Violette was to be envied!  With money, home, and a family, he was not obliged to disseminate his ideas right and left.  He had leisure, and could stop when he was not in the spirit of writing; he could think before he wrote and do some good work.  It was not astonishing, to be sure, that he produced veritable works of art when he is cheered by the atmosphere of affection.  First, he adores his wife, that is easily seen, and he looks upon Maurice’s little son as his own, the little fellow is so pretty and attractive with his long, light curls.  Certainly, one can see that Madame Violette has a never-to-be-forgotten grief, but what a kind and grateful glance she gives her husband!  Could anything be more touching than Louise Gerard, that excellent old maid, the life of the house, who has the knack of making pleasing order and elegant comfort reign in the house, while she surrounds her mother, the paralytic Grandmother Gerard, with every care?  Truly, Amedee has arranged his life well.  He loves and is loved:  he has procured for mind and body valuable and certain customs.  He is a wise and fortunate man.

While Paul Sillery, buried in the corner of a carriage, allowed himself to be almost carried away by jealousy of his friend, Amedee, detained by the charm of this beautiful day which is drawing to a close, walks with slow, lingering steps under the lindens on the terrace.

The leaves are falling around him!

A very slight breeze is rising, the blue sky is fading a little below; in the nearest Paris suburb the windows are shining in the oblique rays of the setting sun.  It will soon be night, and upon this carpet of dead leaves, which crackle under the poet’s tread, other leaves will fall.  They fall rarely, slowly, but continually.  The frost of the night before has blighted them all.  Dried up and rusty, they barely hang to the trees, so that the slightest wind that passes over them gathers them one after another, detaching them from their branches; whirling an instant in the golden light, they at last rejoin, with a sad little sound, their withered sisters, who sprinkle the gravel walks.  The leaves fall, the leaves fall!

Amedee Violette is filled with melancholy.

He ought to be happy.  What can he reproach destiny with?  Has he not the one he always desired for his wife?  Is she not the sweetest and best of companions for him?  Yes! but he knows very well that she consented to marry him in order to obey Maurice’s last wish, he knows very well that Maria’s heart is buried in the soldier’s grave at Champigny.  She has set apart a sanctuary within herself where burns, as a perpetual light, the remembrance of the adored dead, of the man to whom she gave herself without reserve, the father of her son, the hero who tore himself from her arms to shed his blood for his country.