quired a reputation for tireless agility among
the fox-hunters of the Roman Campagna. He still deserves it. In twenty
strides he left me behind. I saw him jumping over the heather, knocking
off with his cane the young shoots on the oaks, or turning his head to
look at me as I struggled after, torn by brambles and pricked by gorse.
A startled pheasant brought him to a halt. The bird rose under his feet
and soared into the full light.

"Isn't it beautiful?" said he. "Look out, we must be more careful; we
are scaring the game. We should come upon the path they took, about
sixty yards ahead."

Five minutes later he was signalling to me from behind the trunk of a
great beech.

"Here they are."

Jeanne and M. Charnot were seated on a fallen trunk beside the path,
which here was almost lost beneath the green boughs. Their backs were
toward us. The old man, with his shoulders bent and his gold-knobbed cane
stuck into the ground beside him, was reading out of a book which we
could not see, while Jeanne, attentive, motionless, her face half turned
toward him, was listening. Her profile was outlined against a strip of
clear sky. The deep silence of the wood wrapped us round, and we could
hear the old scholar's voice; it just reached us.

"Straightway the godlike Odysseus spake these cunning words to the fair
Nausicaa: 'Be thou goddess or mortal, O queen, I bow myself before thee!
If thou art one of the deities who dwell in boundless heaven, by thy
loveliness and grace and height I guess thee to be Artemis, daughter of
high Zeus. If thou art a mortal dwelling upon earth, thrice blessed thy
father and thy queenly mother, thrice blessed thy dear brothers! Surely
their souls ever swell with gladness because of thee, when they see a
maiden so lovely step into the circle of the dance. But far the most
blessed of all is he who shall prevail on thee with presents and lead
thee to his home!'"

I turned to Lampron, who had stopped a few steps in front of me, a
little to the right. He had got out his sketch-book, and was drawing
hurriedly. Presently he forgot all prudence, and came forth from the
shelter of a beech to get nearer to his model. In vain I made sign upon
sign, and tried to remind him that we were not thereto paint or sketch.
It was useless; the artist within him had broken loose. Sitting down at
the required distance on a gnarled root, right in the open, he went on
with his work with no thought but for his art.

The ine