She planted memories everywhere, as seeds are cast upon the earth,
memories whose roots hold till death. It seemed to Jeanne that she was
casting a little of her heart into every fold of these valleys. She
became infatuated with sea bathing. When she was well out from shore,
she would float on her back, her arms crossed, her eyes lost in the
profound blue of the sky which was cleft by the flight of a swallow,
or the white silhouette of a seabird.

After these excursions she invariably came back to the castle pale
with hunger, but light, alert, a smile on her lips and her eyes
sparkling with happiness.

The baron on his part was planning great agricultural enterprises.
Occasionally, also, he went out to sea with the sailors of Yport. On
several occasions he went fishing for mackerel and, again, by
moonlight, he would haul in the nets laid the night before. He loved
to hear the masts creak, to breathe in the fresh and whistling gusts
of wind that arose during the night; and after having tacked a long
time to find the buoys, guiding himself by a peak of rocks, the roof
of a belfry or the Fecamp lighthouse, he delighted to remain
motionless beneath the first gleams of the rising sun which made the
slimy backs of the large fan-shaped rays and the fat bellies of the
turbots glisten on the deck of the boat.

At each meal he gave an enthusiastic account of his expeditions, and
the baroness in her turn told how many times she had walked down the
main avenue of poplars.

As she had been advised to take exercise she made a business of
walking, beginning as soon as the air grew warm. Leaning upon