those "cat-tails" that dotted the deep
blue arch of the sky, and of those dolphins that swiftly traversed the
lonely southern waters!

In this sailor's life, in this profession so terrifying (a career
forbidden to me), how many delightful things happened! I had never until
this evening realized it with such intensity.

The memory of that hasty little reading is the reason why, during my
watches at sea, whenever a helmsman signals a passage of dolphins, I
have always turned my eyes in their direction to watch them; and it
has always given me a peculiar pleasure to note the incident in the
log-book, differing so little from the one in which the sailors of June,
1813, had written before me.

CHAPTER LXVII.

During the vacation that followed, our departure for the south and the
mountains enchanted me more than did my first trip there.

As in the preceding summer we started, my sister and I, at the beginning
of August. While it was no longer a journey of adventure, the pleasure
of returning and again finding there all the things that had formerly so
delighted me surpassed the charm of going forth to meet the unknown.

Between the point where the railroad ended and the village in which
our cousins lived, in the course of the long carriage ride, our little
coachman, in venturing to take what he supposed a short cut, lost his
way, and he carried us into the most exquisite forest nooks. The weather
was beautiful and radiant. With what joy I saluted the first peasant
women whom I saw walking along with great copper water-jars upon their
heads, and the first swarthy peasants conversing in the well remembered
dialect, how I rejoiced when we rolled along over the blood-colored
roads, and when the mountains junipers came into view.

At about noon-time we stopped in a shady valley in a sequestered village
called Veyrac to rest our horses, and we seated ourselves at the foot of
a chestnut tree. There we were attacked by the ducks of the place, the
boldest and most ill bred in the world. They flocked around us in an
unseemly manner, uttering shrill cries and quacking hideously. As we
departed, even after we were in our carriage, these infuriated creatures
followed us; whereupon my sister turned towards them, and with all the
dignity of an old-time traveller outraged by an inhospitable population
exclaimed: "Ducks of Veyrac, be ye accursed!" And for several years
I could not keep a straight face when I remembered the fo