I was tempted for a moment to cry out to him: 

“Get up, uncle Lazare! let us go for a walk together along that path you are so fond of beside the Durance.  You will enjoy the fresh air and morning sun.  You will see what an appetite you will have on your return!”

And Babet, who was going down to the river in her light morning gown, and whom I should not be able to see!  My uncle would be there, and I would have to lower my eyes.  It must be so nice under the willows, lying flat on one’s stomach, in the fine grass!  I felt a languid feeling creeping over me, and, slowly, taking short steps, holding my breath, I reached the door.  I went downstairs, and began running like a madcap in the delightful, warm May morning air.

The sky was quite white on the horizon, with exquisitely delicate blue and pink tints.  The pale sun seemed like a great silver lamp, casting a shower of bright rays into the Durance.  And the broad, sluggish river, expanding lazily over the red sand, extended from one end of the valley to the other, like a stream of liquid metal.  To the west, a line of low rugged hills threw slight violet streaks on the pale sky.

I had been living in this out-of-the-way corner for ten years.  How often had I kept my uncle Lazare waiting to give me my Latin lesson!  The worthy man wanted to make me learned.  But I was on the other side of the Durance, ferreting out magpies, discovering a hill which I had not yet climbed.  Then, on my return, there were remonstrances:  the Latin was forgotten, my poor uncle scolded me for having torn my trousers, and he shuddered when he noticed sometimes that the skin underneath was cut.  The valley was mine, really mine; I had conquered it with my legs, and I was the real landlord by right of friendship.  And that bit of river, those two leagues of the Durance, how I loved them, how well we understood one another when together!  I knew all the whims of my dear stream, its anger, its charming ways, its different features at each hour of the day.

When I reached the water’s edge on that particular morning, I felt something like giddiness at seeing it so gentle and so white.  It had never looked so gay.  I slipped rapidly beneath the willows, to an open space where a broad patch of sunlight fell on the dark grass.  There I laid me down on my stomach, listening, watching the pathway by which Babet would come, through the branches.

“Oh! how sound uncle Lazare must be sleeping!” I thought.

And I extended myself at full length on the moss.  The sun struck gentle heat into my back, whilst my breast, buried in the grass, was quite cool.