question of gathering a few sous from the
[128] fields; and those fields took and consumed him.'"

The boy fancies that the blind eyes are turned towards a particular
spot in the landscape, as if they saw:--

"'I often turn my eyes in that direction (the old man explains) from
habit. One might suppose that a peasant had the scent of the earth on
which he has laboured. I have given so much of the sweat of my
brow--there--towards Rocaillet! Angelique, my dead wife, was of
Rocaillet; and when she married me, brought a few morsels of land in
her apron. What a state they're in now!--those poor morsels of land we
used to weed and rake and hoe, my boy and I! What superb crops of
vetches we mowed then, for feeding, in due time, our lambs, our calves!
All is gone to ruin since my blindness, and especially since Angelique
left me for the churchyard, never to come back.' He paused to my great
relief. For every one of those phrases he modulated under the
fig-trees more sadly than the Lamentations of Jeremiah on Jeudi Saint
overset me--was like death."

[129] That is good drawing, in its simple and quiet way! The actual
scene, however, is cheerful enough on this early summer day--a
symphony, as we said, in cherries and goldfinches, in which the higher
valleys of the Cevennes abound. In fact, the boys witness the
accordailles, the engagement, of Norine and Justin Lebasset. The
latter is calling the birds to sing good luck to the event:--

"He had a long steady look towards the fruit-trees, and then whistled,
on a note at once extremely clear and extremely soft. He paused,
watched awhile, recommenced. The note became more rapid, more
sonorous. What an astounding man he was, this Justin Lebasset!
Upright, his red beard forward, his forehead thrown back, his eyes on
the thick foliage of the cherry-trees, his hands on his haunches, in an
attitude of repose, easy, superb, he was like some youthful pagan god,
gilded with red gold, on his way across the country--like Pan, if he
chose to amuse himself by charming birds. You should have seen the
enthusiastic glances with which Norine watched him. Upright--she too,
slim, at full height, inclining from [130] time to time towards Justin
with a movement of irresistible fascination, she followed the notes of
her mate; and sometimes, her, lips half opening, added thereto a
sigh--something of a sigh, an aspiration, a prayer, towards the
goldfinch, withdrawn into the shadows.

"T