roof. Further knowledge gleaned from
books taught me that the lover of stony hillsides is also called the
Motteux, or clodhopper, because, in the plowing season, she flies
from clod to clod, inspecting the furrows rich in unearthed grubworms.
Lastly, I came upon the Provencal expression Cul-blanc, which is also a
picturesque term, suggesting the patch on the bird's rump which spreads
out like a white butterfly flitting over the fields.

Thus did the vocabulary come into being that would one day allow me
to greet by their real names the thousand actors on the stage of the
fields, the thousand little flowers that smile at us from the wayside.
The word which the curate had spoken without attaching the least
importance to it revealed a world to me, the world of plants and animals
designated by their real names. To the future must belong the task of
deciphering some pages of the immense lexicon; for today I will content
myself with remembering the Saxicola, or stonechat.

On the west, my village crumbles into an avalanche of garden patches,
in which plums and apples ripen. Low bulging walls, blackened with the
stains of lichens and mosses, support the terraces. The brook runs at
the foot of the slope. It can be cleared almost everywhere at a bound.
In the wider parts, flat stones standing out of the water serve as
a foot bridge. There is no such thing as a whirlpool, the terror of
mothers when the children are away; it is nowhere more than knee deep.
Dear little brook, so tranquil, cool and clear, I have seen majestic
rivers since, I have seen the boundless sea; but nothing in my memories
equals your modest falls. About you clings all the hallowed pleasure of
my first impressions.

A miller has bethought him of putting the brook, which used to flow so
gaily through the fields, to work. Halfway up the slope, a watercourse,
economizing the gradient, diverts part of the water and conducts it into
a large reservoir, which supplies the mill wheels with motor power. This
basin stands beside a frequented path and is walled off at the end.

One day, hoisting myself on a playfellow's shoulders, I looked over
the melancholy wall, all bearded with ferns. I saw bottomless stagnant
waters, covered with slimy green. In the gaps in the sticky carpet, a
sort of dumpy, black-and-yellow reptile was lazily swimming. Today,
I should call it a salamander; at that time, it appeared to me the
offspring of the serpent and the dragon, of whom we