I first met Leuven at a fête in the beautiful village of Corey, a league's distance from Villers-Cotteretsa village buried in the centre of great woods, like a nest among high branches. I had left my companions for an instant in the course of the dance, and I had gone to some distance to pay a visit to an old friend of my father, a farmer, whose farm was nearly a quarter of a league from the village. I took a pretty path at the foot of a hill to get there, hedged on both sides by hawthorn in full blossom, and studded with daisies, their golden centres fringed by pink-tipped petals.
Suddenly, at a bend in the path, I saw three people coming towards me, in a ray of sunlight which bathed them in light; two were well known to me, but the third was a complete stranger. The two I knew were Caroline Collard, who, as previously related, had become Baroness Capelle. The other was her daughter, Marie Capelle, then only three years old, who to her misfortune was to become Madame Lafarge. The third person, the stranger, looked at first sight like a German student; he was a youth of between sixteen and seventeen, and was dressed in a grey jacket, an oilskin cap, a waistcoat of chamois leather and bright blue trousers, almost as tight-fitting as mine, but with this difference, that while my topboots covered up my breeches, his, on the contrary, were covered up by his trousers.
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