ed around with her head high in air. So the
Notary angrily said of her that she was looking for mushrooms on the
trees; the Assessor more maliciously compared her to a female looking
about for a nesting-place.

She seemed in search of quiet and solitude; slowly she withdrew from her
companions and went through the wood to a gently sloping hillock, well
shaded by the trees that grew thickly upon it. In the midst of it was a
grey rock; from under the rock a stream gurgled and spouted, and at once,
as if it sought the shade, took refuge amid the tall, thick greenery,
which, watered by it, grew luxuriantly on all sides. There that swift
rogue, swaddled in grasses and bedded upon leaves, motionless and
noiseless, whispered unseen and almost inaudibly, like a tired child laid
in a cradle, when its mother ties above it the bright green curtains, and
sprinkles poppy leaves beneath its head. It was a lovely and quiet spot;
here Telimena often took refuge, calling it the Temple of Meditation.

Standing above the stream, she threw on the greensward, from her
shoulders, her waving shawl, red as carnelian; and, like a swimmer who
bends down to the wintry bath before she ventures to plunge in, she knelt
and slowly inclined on her side; finally, as if drawn down by the stream
of coral, she fell upon it and stretched out at full length: she rested
her elbow on the grass, her temple on her palm, with her head bent down;
beneath her head glittered the vellum paper of a French book; over the
alabaster pages of the book there wound her black ringlets and pink
ribbons.

Amid the emerald of the luxuriant grass, on the carnelian shawl, in her
long gown, as though in a wrapper of coral, against which her hair was
relieved at one end and her black shoes at the other, while along the
sides glittered her snowy stockings, her handkerchief, and the whiteness
of her hands and face, she showed from afar like a many-coloured
caterpillar, crawling upon a green maple leaf.

Alas! all the charms and graces of this picture vainly awaited experts to
appreciate them; no one heeded them, so deeply were all engrossed in the
gathering of mushrooms. But Thaddeus heeded them and kept glancing
sideways; and, not daring to go straight on, edged along obliquely. As a
huntsman, when, seated between two wheels beneath a moving canopy of
boughs, he advances on bustards; or, when approaching plover, he hides
himself behind his horse, putting his gun on the saddle or