the summer sun. Pine trees pushed their way through the clefts; clumps
of trees, scarcely thicker at the roots than tufts of grass, fringed
the crests and hung over the abyss. It was a chaos; a blasted
landscape, a mouth of hell, with its wild turns, its droppings of
blood-colored earth sliding down from every cut, its desolate solitude
invaded only by the eagles' flight.

Felicite did not open her lips; her brain was at work, and she seemed
completely absorbed in her thoughts. The atmosphere was oppressive,
the sun sent his burning rays from behind a veil of great livid
clouds. Pascal was almost the only one who talked, in his passionate
love for this scorched land--a love which he endeavored to make his
nephew share. But it was in vain that he uttered enthusiastic
exclamations, in vain that he called his attention to the persistence
of the olives, the fig trees, and the thorn bushes in pushing through
the rock; the life of the rock itself, that colossal and puissant
frame of the earth, from which they could almost fancy they heard a
sound of breathing arise. Maxime remained cold, filled with a secret
anguish in presence of those blocks of savage majesty, whose mass
seemed to crush him. And he preferred to turn his eyes toward his
sister, who was seated in front of him. He was becoming more and more
charmed with her. She looked so healthy and so happy, with her pretty
round head, with its straight, well-molded forehead. Now and then
their glances met, and she gave him an affectionate smile which
consoled him.

But the wildness of the gorge was beginning to soften, the two walls
of rock to grow lower; they passed between two peaceful hills, with
gentle slopes covered with thyme and lavender. It was the desert
still, there were still bare spaces, green or violet hued, from which