He thought he had never seen anything so characteristically French; all
the French novels seemed to have described it, all the French
landscapists to have painted it. The fields and trees were of a cool
metallic green; the grass looked as if it might stain his trousers and
the foliage his hands. The clear light had a mild greyness, the sheen of
silver, not of gold, was in the work-a-day sun. A great red-roofed high-
stacked farmhouse, with whitewashed walls and a straggling yard,
surveyed the highroad, on one side, from behind a transparent curtain of
poplars. A narrow stream half-choked with emerald rushes and edged with
grey aspens occupied the opposite quarter. The meadows rolled and sloped
away gently to the low horizon, which was barely concealed by the
continuous line of clipped and marshalled trees. The prospect was not
rich, but had a frank homeliness that touched the young man's fancy. It
was full of light atmosphere and diffused clearness, and if it was
prosaic it was somehow sociable.

Longmore was disposed to walk further, and he advanced along the road
beneath the poplars. In twenty minutes he came to a village which
straggled away to the right, among orchards and potagers. On the left,
at a stone's throw from the road, stood a little pink-faced inn which
reminded him that he had not breakfasted, having left home with a
prevision of hospitality from Madame de Mauves. In the inn he found a
brick-tiled parlour and a hostess in sabots and a white cap, whom, over
the omelette she speedily served him--borrowing licence from the bottle
of sound red wine that accompanied it--he assured she was a true artist.
To reward his compliment she invited him to smoke his cigar in her
little garden behind the house.

Here he found a tonnelle and a view of tinted crops stretching down to
the stream. The tonnelle was rather close, and he preferred to lounge on