The day was thus passed alternately in activity and rest, in pursuit and meditation, until the declining sun warned him to take again the road to Paris, where he would arrive, his feet torn and dusty, but his mind invigorated for a whole week.
One day, as he was going toward the wood of Viroflay, he met, close to it, a stranger who was occupied in botanizing and in sorting the plants he had just gathered.

He was an elderly man with an honest face; but his eyes, which were rather deep-set under his eyebrows, had a somewhat uneasy and timid expression.

He was dressed in a brown cloth coat, a gray waistcoat, black breeches, and worsted stockings, and held an ivory-headed cane under his arm.

His appearance was that of a small retired tradesman who was living on his means, and rather below the golden mean of Horace.
My father, who had great respect for age, civilly raised his hat to him as he passed.

In doing so, a plant he held fell from his hand; the stranger stooped to take it up, and recognized it.
"It is a Deutaria heptaphyllos," said he; "I have not yet seen any of them in these woods; did you find it near here, sir ?" My father replied that it was to be found in abundance on the top of the hill, toward Sevres, as well as the great Laserpitium.
"That, too!" repeated the old man more briskly.