poplars were laughing as they swayed; not a cloud was in the sky; the
birds sang, the crickets chirped,--all was melody. Do not ask me again
why I love Touraine. I love it, not as we love our cradle, not as we
love the oasis in a desert; I love it as an artist loves art; I love
it less than I love you; but without Touraine, perhaps I might not now
be living.

Without knowing why, my eyes reverted ever to that white spot, to the
woman who shone in that garden as the bell of a convolvulus shines
amid the underbrush, and wilts if touched. Moved to the soul, I
descended the slope and soon saw a village, which the superabounding
poetry that filled my heart made me fancy without an equal. Imagine
three mills placed among islands of graceful outline crowned with
groves of trees and rising from a field of water,--for what other name
can I give to that aquatic vegetation, so verdant, so finely colored,
which carpeted the river, rose above its surface and undulated upon
it, yielding to its caprices and swaying to the turmoil of the water
when the mill-wheels lashed it. Here and there were mounds of gravel,
against which the wavelets broke in fringes that shimmered in the
sunlight. Amaryllis, water-lilies, reeds, and phloxes decorated the
banks with their glorious tapestry. A trembling bridge of rotten
planks, the abutments swathed with flowers, and the hand-rails green
with perennials and velvet mosses drooping to the river but not
falling to it; mouldering boats, fishing-nets; the monotonous
sing-song of a shepherd; ducks paddling among the islands or preening
on the "jard,"--a name given to the coarse sand which the Loire brings
down; the millers, with their caps over one ear, busily loading their
mules,--all these details made the scene before me one of primitive
simplicity. Imagine, also, beyond the bridge two or three farm-houses,
a dove-cote, turtle-doves, thirty or more dilapidated cottages,