a squirrel, but
then every one of us has retained the type of some animal or other
as the mark of his primitive origin. How many people have jaws like a
bulldog, or heads like goats, rabbits, foxes, horses, or oxen. Paul is a
squirrel turned into a man. He has its bright, quick eyes, its hair,
its pointed nose, its small, fine, supple, active body, and a certain
mysterious resemblance in his general bearing; in fact, a similarity of
movement, of gesture, and of bearing which might almost be taken for a
recollection.

At last we both went to sleep with that uncomfortable slumber of the
railway carriage, which is interrupted by horrible cramps in the arms
and neck, and by the sudden stoppages of the train.

We woke up as we were passing along the Rhone. Soon the continued noise
of crickets came in through the windows, that cry which seems to be the
voice of the warm earth, the song of Provence; and seemed to instill
into our looks, our breasts, and our souls the light and happy feeling
of the south, that odor of the parched earth, of the stony and light
soil of the olive with its gray-green foliage.

When the train stopped again a railway guard ran along the train calling
out "Valence" in a sonorous voice, with an accent that again gave us a
taste of that Provence which the shrill note of the crickets had already
imparted to us.

Nothing fresh happened till we got to Marseilles, where we alighted
for breakfast, but when we returned to our carriage we found a woman
installed there.

Paul, with a delighted glance at me, gave his short mustache a
mechanical twirl, and passed his fingers through his, hair, which had
become slightly out of order with the night's journey. Then he sat down
opposite the newcomer.

Whenever I happen to see a striking new face, either in travelling or
in society, I always have the strongest inclination to find out what
character, mind, and intellectual capacities are hidden beneath those
features.

She was a young and pretty woman, certainly a native of the south of
France, with splendid eyes, beautiful wavy black hair, which was so
thick and long that it seemed almost too heavy for her head. She was
dressed with a certain southern bad taste which made her look a little
vulgar. Her regular features had none of the grace and finish of the
refined races, of that slight delicacy which members of the aristocracy
inherit from their birth, and which is the hereditary mark of thinner
blood.