russet slopes,
the exhausted Viorne was almost running dry beneath the span of an
old dust-bepowdered bridge, without a bit of green, nothing save a few
bushes, dying for want of moisture. Farther on, the mountain gorge of
the Infernets showed its yawning chasm amidst tumbled rocks, struck down
by lightning, a huge chaos, a wild desert, rolling stony billows as far
as the eye could reach. Then came all sorts of well remembered nooks:
the valley of Repentance, narrow and shady, a refreshing oasis amid
calcined fields; the wood of Les Trois Bons-Dieux, with hard, green,
varnished pines shedding pitchy tears beneath the burning sun; the sheep
walk of Bouffan, showing white, like a mosque, amidst a far-stretching
blood-red plain. And there were yet bits of blinding, sinuous roads;
ravines, where the heat seemed even to wring bubbling perspiration from
the pebbles; stretches of arid, thirsty sand, drinking up rivers drop
by drop; mole hills, goat paths, and hill crests, half lost in the azure
sky.

'Hallo!' exclaimed Sandoz, turning towards one sketch, 'what's that?'

Claude, indignant, waved his palette. 'What! don't you remember? We
were very nigh breaking our necks there. Surely you recollect the day we
clambered from the very bottom of Jaumegarde with Dubuche? The rock was
as smooth as your hand, and we had to cling to it with our nails, so
that at one moment we could neither get up nor go down again. When we
were once atop and about to cook our cutlets, we, you and I, nearly came
to blows.'

Sandoz now remembered. 'Yes, yes; each had to roast his own cutlet on
rosemary sticks, and, as mine took fire, you exasperated me by chaffing
my cutlet, which was being reduced to cinders.'

They both shook with laughter, until the painter resumed his work,
gravely concluding, 'That's all over, old man. There is to be no more
idling at present.'

He spoke the truth. Since the three inseparables had realised
their dream of meeting together in Paris, which they were bent upon
conquering, their life had been terribly hard. They had tried to renew
the long walks of old. On certain Sunday mornings they had started on
foot from the Fontainebleau gate, had scoured the copses of Verrieres,
gone as far as the Bievre, crossed the woods of Meudon and Bellevue,
and returned home by way of Grenelle. But they taxed Paris with spoiling
their legs; they scarcely ever left the pavement now, entirely taken up
as they were with their struggle fo