about it. Grandmother smiled fondly at my simplicity: the others
laughed at it. 'Tis the way of the world.

Another find. At nightfall, amidst the neighboring bushes, a sort
of jingle attracted my attention, sounding very faintly and softly
through the evening silence. Who is making that noise? Is it a
little bird chirping in his nest? We must look into the matter and
that quickly. True, there is the wolf, who comes out of the woods
at this time, so they tell me. Let's go all the same, but not too
far: just there, behind that clump of groom. I stand on the look
out for long, but all in vain. At the faintest sound of movement
in the brushwood, the jingle ceases. I try again next day and the
day after. This time, my stubborn watch succeeds. Whoosh! A grab
of my hand and I hold the singer. It is not a bird; it is a kind
of Grasshopper whose hind legs my playfellows have taught me to
like: a poor recompense for my prolonged ambush. The best part of
the business is not the two haunches with the shrimpy flavor, but
what I have just learnt. I now know, from personal observation,
that the Grasshopper sings. I did not publish my discovery, for
fear of the same laughter that greeted my story about the sun.

Oh, what pretty flowers, in a field close to the house! They seem
to smile to me with their great violet eyes. Later on, I see, in
their place, bunches of big red cherries. I taste them. They are
not nice and they have no stones. What can those cherries be? At
the end of the summer, grandfather comes with a spade and turns my
field of observation topsy-turvy. From under ground there comes,
by the basketful and sackful, a sort of round root. I know that
root; it abounds in the house; time after time I have cooked it in
the peat stove. It is the potato. Its violet flower and its red