the Avonne, to which circumstance it owes a slight resemblance to an
enormous turtle lying across the river, forms an arch through which
the eye takes in a little sheet of water, clear as a mirror, where the
stream seems to sleep until it reaches in the distance a series of
cascades falling among huge rocks, where little weeping willows with
elastic motion sway back and forth to the flow of waters.

Beyond these cascades is the hillside, rising sheer, like a Rhine rock
clothed with moss and heather, gullied like it, again, by sharp ridges
of schist and mica sending down, here and there, white foaming
rivulets to which a little meadow, always watered and always green,
serves as a cup; farther on, beyond the picturesque chaos and in
contrast to this wild, solitary nature, the gardens of Conches are
seen, with the village roofs and the clock-tower and the outlying
fields.

There are the two paragraphs, but the rising sun, the purity of the
air, the dewy sheen, the melody of woods and waters--imagine them!

"Almost as charming as at the Opera," thought Blondet, making his way
along the banks of the unnavigable portion of the Avonne, whose
caprices contrast with the straight and deep and silent stream of the
lower river, flowing between the tall trees of the forest of Les
Aigues.

Blondet did not proceed far on his morning walk, for he was presently
brought to a stand-still by the sight of a peasant,--one of those who,
in this drama, are supernumeraries so essential to its action that it
may be doubted whether they are not in fact its leading actors.