should not wet her feet. Then they walked up the shingly beach side by
side, and they overheard Pere Lastique say to the baron, "My! but they
would make a pretty couple!"

They took breakfast in a little inn near the beach, and while the
ocean had lulled their thoughts and made them silent, the breakfast
table had the opposite effect, and they chattered like children on a
vacation. The slightest thing gave rise to laughter.

Pere Lastique, on taking his place at table, carefully hid his lighted
pipe in his cap. That made them laugh. A fly, attracted no doubt by
his red nose, persistently alighted on it, and each time it did so
they burst into laughter. Finally the old man could stand it no
longer, and murmured: "It is devilishly persistent!" whereupon Jeanne
and the vicomte laughed till they cried.

After breakfast Jeanne suggested that they should take a walk. The
vicomte rose, but the baron preferred to bask in the sun on the beach.

"Go on, my children, you will find me here in an hour."

They walked straight ahead of them, passing by several cottages and
finally by a small chateau resembling a large farm, and found
themselves in an open valley that extended for some distance. They now
had a wild longing to run at large in the fields. Jeanne seemed to
have a humming in her ears from all the new and rapidly changing
sensations she had experienced. The burning rays of the sun fell on
them. On both sides of the road the crops were bending over from the
heat. The grasshoppers, as numerous as the blades of grass, were
uttering their thin, shrill cry.