Where should I keep the precious picture? As it happened, in the
room set apart for the children at home, there was a little window
like the one in the school, opening in the same way out of a sort
of recess and in the same way overlooking most of the village. One
was on the right, the other on the left of the castle with the
pigeon house towers; both afforded an equally good view of the
heights of the slanting valley. I was able to enjoy the school
window only at rare intervals, when the master left his little
table; the other was at my disposal as often as I liked. I spent
long hours there, sitting on a little fixed window seat.

The view was magnificent. I could see the ends of the earth, that
is to say, the hills that blocked the horizon, all but a misty gap
through which the brook with the crayfish flowed under the alders
and willows. High up on the skyline, a few wind-battered oaks
bristled on the ridges; and beyond there lay nothing but the
unknown, laden with mystery.

At the back of the hollow stood the church, with its three steeples
and its clock; and, a little higher, the village square, where a
spring, fashioned into a fountain, gurgled from one basin into
another, under a wide arched roof. I could hear from my window the
chatter of the women washing their clothes, the strokes of their
beaters, the rasping of the pots scoured with sand and vinegar.
Sprinkled over the slopes are little houses with their garden
patches in terraces banked up by tottering walls, which bulge under
the thrust of the earth. Here and there are very steep lanes, with
the dents of the rock forming a natural pavement. The mule, sure-
footed though he be, would hesitate to enter these dangerous passes