oyed by a conflagration and only one of the two
buildings remained--a quadrangular wing "of four walls," as they say in
Provence, with five front windows and roofed with large pink tiles.
And the doctor, who had bought it completely furnished, had contented
himself with repairing it and finishing the boundary walls, so as to be
undisturbed in his house.

Generally Clotilde loved this solitude passionately; this narrow
kingdom which she could go over in ten minutes, and which still retained
remnants of its past grandeur. But this morning she brought there
something like a nervous disquietude. She walked for a few moments along
the terrace, at the two extremities of which stood two secular cypresses
like two enormous funeral tapers, which could be seen three leagues off.
The slope then descended to the railroad, walls of uncemented stones
supporting the red earth, in which the last vines were dead; and on
these giant steps grew only rows of olive and almond trees, with sickly
foliage. The heat was already overpowering; she saw the little lizards
running about on the disjointed flags, among the hairy tufts of caper
bushes.

Then, as if irritated by the vast horizon, she crossed the orchard and
the kitchen garden, which Martine still persisted in cultivating in
spite of her age, calling in a man only twice a week for the heavier
labors; and she ascended to a little pine wood on the right, all that
remained of the superb pines which had formerly covered the plateau;
but, here, too, she was ill at ease; the pine needles crackled under her
feet, a resinous, stifling odor descended from the branches. And walking
along the boundary wall past the entrance gate, which opened on the
road to Les Fenouilleres, three hundred meters from the first houses of
Plassans, she emerged at last on the threshing-yard; an immense yard,
fifteen meters in radius, which would of itself have sufficed to prove
the former importance of the domain. Ah! this antique area, paved with
small round stones, as in the days of the Romans; this species of vast
esplanade, covered with short dry grass of the color of gold as with a
thick woolen carpet; how joyously she had played there in other days,
running about, rolling on the grass, lying for hours on her back,
watching the stars coming out one by one in the depths of the
illimitable sky!

She opened her umbrella again, and crossed the yard with slower steps.
Now she was on the left of the terrace. She had