surface of the pools; all that silent teeming life which
drew them to the water and impelled them to dabble and stand in it, so
that they might feel those millions of existences ever and ever gliding
past their limbs. At other times, when the day was hot and languid, they
would betake themselves beneath the voiceful shade of the forest and
listen to the serenades of their musicians, the clear fluting of the
nightingales, the silvery bugle-notes of the tomtits, and the far-off
accompaniment of the cuckoos. They gazed with delight upon the swift
flight of the pheasants, whose plumes gleamed like sudden sun rays
amidst the branches, and with a smile they stayed their steps to let a
troop of young roebucks bound past, or else a couple of grave stags that
slackened their pace to look at them. Again, on other days they would
climb up amongst the rocks, when the sun was blazing in the heavens,
and find a pleasure in watching the swarms of grasshoppers which at the
sound of their footsteps arose with a great crepitation of wings from
the beds of thyme. The snakes that lay uncoiled beneath the parched
bushes, or the lizards that sprawled over the red-hot stones, watched
them with friendly eyes.

Of all the life that thus teemed round them in the park, Albine and
Serge had only become really conscious since the day when a kiss had
awakened them to life themselves. Now it deafened them at times, and
spoke to them in a language which they did not understand. It was that
life--all the voices of the animal creation, all the perfumes and soft
shadows of the flowers and trees--which perturbed them to such a point
as to make them angry with one another. And yet throughout the whole
park they found nothing but loving familiarity. Every plant and every
creature was their friend. All the Paradou was one great caress.

Before they had come thither, the sun had for a whole century reigned
over it in lonely majesty. The garden, then, had known no other master;
it had beheld him, every morning, scaling the boundary wall with his
slanting rays, at noontide it had seen him pour his vertical heat upon
the panting soil; and at evening it had seen him go off, on the other
side, with a kiss of farewell upon its foliage. And so the garden had
no shyness; it welcomed Albine and Serge, as it had so long welcomed
the sun, as pleasant companions, with whom one puts on no ceremony.
The animals, the trees, the streams, the rocks, all continued in an
unres