macking his lips.

Through the yard gate that opens on to the road we see a group of
poilus strolling, nose in air, devouring the sunshine; and then, all
alone, Tellurure. In the middle of the street he oscillates the
prosperous abdomen of which he is proprietor, and rocking on legs
arched like basket-handles, he expectorates in wide abundance all
around him.

"We thought, too, that we should be as badly off here as in the other
quarters. But this time it's real rest, both in the time it lasts and
the kind it is."

"You're not given too many exercises and fatigues."

"And between whiles you come in here to loll about."

The old man huddled up at the end of the seat--no other than the
treasure-seeking grandfather whom we saw the day of our arrival--came
nearer and lifted his finger. "When I was a young man, I was thought a
lot of by women," he asserted, shaking his head. "I have led young
ladies astray!"

"Ah!" said we, heedless, our attention taken away from his senile
prattle by the timely noise of a cart that was passing, laden and
laboring.

"Nowadays," the old man went on, "I only think about money."

"Ah, oui, the treasure you're looking for, papa."

"That's it," said the old rustic, though he felt the skepticism around
him. He tapped his cranium with his forefinger, which he then extended
towards the house. "Take that insect there," he said, indicating a
little beast that ran along the plaster. "What does it say? It says, 'I
am the spider that spins the Virgin's thread.'" And the archaic
simpleton added, "One must never judge what people do, for one can
never tell what may happen."

"That's true," replied Paradis politely. "He's funny," said Mesnil
Andre, between his teeth, while he sought the mirror in his pocket to
look at the facial benefit of fine weather. "He's crazy," murmured
Barque in his ecstasy.

"I leave you," said the old man, yielding in annoyance.

He got up to go and look for his treasure again, entered the house that
supported our backs, and left the door open, where beside the huge
fireplace in the room we saw a little girl, so seriously playing with a
doll that Blaire fell considering, and said, "She's right."

The games of children are a momentous preoccupation. Only the grown-ups
play.

After we have watched the animals and the strollers go by, we watch the
time go by, we watch everything.

We are seeing the life of things, we are present with Nature, blended
with climates,