turned into a
shallow valley leading to the mountains. The uncultivated country seemed
perfectly bare, and the sides of the hills were covered with tall weeds,
turned sere and yellow by the burning heat; they often crossed ravines
where only a narrow stream still ran with a gurgling sound, and
occasionally they met a mountaineer, sometimes on foot, sometimes riding
his little horse, or bestriding a donkey no bigger than a dog; these
mountaineers always carried a loaded gun which might be old and rusty,
but which became a very formidable weapon in their hands. The air was
filled with the pungent smell of the aromatic plants with which the isle
is covered, and the road sloped gradually upwards, winding round the
mountains.

The peaks of blue and pink granite made the island look like a fairy
palace, and, from the heights, the forests of immense chestnut trees on
the lower parts of the hills looked like green thickets. Sometimes the
guide would point to some steep height, and mention a name; Jeanne and
Julien would look, at first seeing nothing, but at last discovering the
summit of the mountain. It was a village, a little granite hamlet,
hanging and clinging like a bird's nest to the vast mountain. Jeanne got
tired of going at a walking pace for so long.

"Let us gallop a little," she said, whipping up her horse.

She could not hear her husband behind her, and, turning round to see
where he was, she burst out laughing. Pale with fright, he was holding
onto his horse's mane, almost jolted out of the saddle by the animal's
motion. His awkwardness and fear were all the more funny, because he was
such a grave, handsome man. Then they trotted gently along the road
between two thickets formed of juniper trees, green oaks, arbutus trees,
heaths, bay trees, myrtles, and box trees, whose branches were formed
into a network by the climbing clematis, and between and around which
grew big ferns, honeysuckles, rosemary, lavender, and briars, forming a
perfectly impassable thicket, which covered the hill like a cloak. The
travelers began to get hungry, and the guide rejoined them and took them
to one of those springs so often met with in a mountainous country, with
the icy water flowing from a little hole in the rock where some
passer-by has left the big chestnut leaf which conveyed the water to his
mouth. Jeanne felt so happy that she could hardly help shouting aloud;
and they again remounted and began to descend, winding round the