ld fruit. Love is always love, come whence it may. A heart that beats
at your approach, an eye that weeps when you go away are things so rare,
so sweet, so precious that they must never be despised.

"I have had rendezvous in ditches full of primroses, behind the cow
stable and in barns among the straw, still warm from the heat of the
day. I have recollections of coarse gray cloth covering supple peasant
skin and regrets for simple, frank kisses, more delicate in
their unaffected sincerity than the subtle favors of charming and
distinguished women.

"But what one loves most amid all these varied adventures is the
country, the woods, the rising of the sun, the twilight, the moonlight.
These are, for the painter, honeymoon trips with Nature. One is alone
with her in that long and quiet association. You go to sleep in the
fields, amid marguerites and poppies, and when you open your eyes in the
full glare of the sunlight you descry in the distance the little village
with its pointed clock tower which sounds the hour of noon.

"You sit down by the side of a spring which gushes out at the foot of an
oak, amid a growth of tall, slender weeds, glistening with life. You
go down on your knees, bend forward and drink that cold, pellucid
water which wets your mustache and nose; you drink it with a physical
pleasure, as though you kissed the spring, lip to lip. Sometimes, when
you find a deep hole along the course of these tiny brooks, you plunge
in quite naked, and you feel on your skin, from head to foot, as it
were, an icy and delicious caress, the light and gentle quivering of the
stream.

"You are gay on the hills, melancholy on the edge of ponds, inspired
when the sun is setting in an ocean of blood-red clouds and casts red
reflections or the river. And at night, under the moon, which passes
across the vault of heaven, you think of a thousand strange things which
would never have occurred to your mind under the brilliant light of day.

"So, in wandering through the same country where we, are this year, I
came to the little village of Benouville, on the cliff between Yport
and Etretat. I came from Fecamp, following the coast, a high coast
as straight as a wall, with its projecting chalk cliffs descending
perpendicularly into the sea. I had walked since early morning on the
short grass, smooth and yielding as a carpet, that grows on the edge
of the cliff. And, singing lustily, I walked with long strides, looking
sometimes a