and sit in the mouth of a cave among grey birches.
His soul stared straight out of his eyes; he did not move or think;
sunlight, thin shadows moving in the wind, the edge of firs against the
sky, occupied and bound his faculties. He was pure unity, a spirit
wholly abstracted. A single mood filled him, to which all the objects of
sense contributed, as the colours of the spectrum merge and disappear in
white light.

So while the Doctor made himself drunk with words, the adopted stable-boy
bemused himself with silence.

CHAPTER V. TREASURE TROVE.

The Doctor's carriage was a two-wheeled gig with a hood; a kind of
vehicle in much favour among country doctors. On how many roads has one
not seen it, a great way off between the poplars!--in how many village
streets, tied to a gate-post! This sort of chariot is
affected--particularly at the trot--by a kind of pitching movement to and
fro across the axle, which well entitles it to the style of a Noddy. The
hood describes a considerable arc against the landscape, with a solemnly
absurd effect on the contemplative pedestrian. To ride in such a
carriage cannot be numbered among the things that appertain to glory; but
I have no doubt it may be useful in liver complaint. Thence, perhaps,
its wide popularity among physicians.

One morning early, Jean-Marie led forth the Doctor's noddy, opened the
gate, and mounted to the driving-seat. The Doctor followed, arrayed from
top to toe in spotless linen, armed with an immense flesh-coloured
umbrella, and girt with a botanical case on a baldric; and the equipage
drove off smartly in a breeze of its own provocation. They were bound
for Franchard, to collect plants, with an eye to the 'Comparative
Pharmacopoeia.'

A little rattling on the open roads, and they came to the borders of the
forest and struck into an unfrequented track; the noddy yawed softly over
the sand, with an accompaniment of snapping twigs. There was a great,
green, softly murmuring cloud of congregated foliage overhead. In the
arcades of the forest the air retained the freshness of the night. The
athletic bearing of the trees, each carrying its leafy mountain, pleased
the mind like so many statues; and the lines of the trunk led the eye
admiringly upward to where the extreme leaves sparkled in a patch of
azure. Squirrels leaped in mid air. It was a proper spot for a devotee
of the goddess Hygieia.

'Have you been to Franchard, Jean-Marie?' inquire