and streams and mountains; revelling in the supreme joy of being
alone and free.

Dubuche, who was a boarder, had only joined them on half-holidays and
during the long vacation. Besides, his legs were heavy, and he had the
quiet nature of a studious lad. But Claude and Sandoz never wearied;
they awakened each other every Sunday morning by throwing stones at
their respective shutters. In summer, above all, they were haunted by
the thought of the Viorne, the torrent, whose tiny stream waters the
low-lying pastures of Plassans. When scarcely twelve they already knew
how to swim, and it became a passion with them to potter about in the
holes where the water accumulated; to spend whole days there, stark
naked, drying themselves on the burning sand, and then replunging into
the river, living there as it were, on their backs, on their stomachs,
searching among the reeds on the banks, immersed up to their ears, and
watching the hiding-places of the eels for hours at a stretch. That
constant contact of water beneath a burning sun prolonged their
childhood, as it were, and lent them the joyous laughter of truant
urchins, though they were almost young men, when of an evening they
returned to the town amidst the still oppressive heat of a summer
sunset. Later on they became very fond of shooting, but shooting such
as is carried on in a region devoid of game, where they had to trudge
a score of miles to pick off half a dozen pettychaps, or fig-peckers;
wonderful expeditions, whence they returned with their bags empty, or
with a mere bat, which they had managed to bring down while discharging
their guns at the outskirts of the town. Their eyes moistened at the
recollection of those happy days; they once more beheld the white
endless roads, covered with layers of dust, as if there had been a fall
of snow. They paced them again and again in their imagination, happy to
hear the fancied creaking of their heavy shoes. Then they cut across the
fields, over the reddish-brown ferruginous soil, careering madly on
and on; and there was a sky of molten lead above them, not a shadow
anywhere, nothing but dwarf olive trees and almond trees with scanty
foliage. And then the delicious drowsiness of fatigue on their return,
their triumphant bravado at having covered yet more ground than on the
precious journey, the delight of being no longer conscious of effort,
of advancing solely by dint of strength acquired, spurring themselves on
with some terr