Pere Merlier’s mill was pleasing to look upon.  It stood exactly in the center of Rocreuse, where the highway made an elbow.  The village had but one street, with two rows of huts, a row on each side of the road; but at the elbow meadows spread out, and huge trees which lined the banks of the Morelle covered the extremity of the valley with lordly shade.  There was not, in all Lorraine, a corner of nature more adorable.  To the right and to the left thick woods, centenarian forests, towered up from gentle slopes, filling the horizon with a sea of verdure, while toward the south the plain stretched away, of marvelous fertility, displaying as far as the eye could reach patches of ground divided by green hedges.  But what constituted the special charm of Rocreuse was the coolness of that cut of verdure in the most sultry days of July and August.  The Morelle descended from the forests of Gagny and seemed to have gathered the cold from the foliage beneath which it flowed for leagues; it brought with it the murmuring sounds, the icy and concentrated shade of the woods.  And it was not the sole source of coolness:  all sorts of flowing streams gurgled through the forest; at each step springs bubbled up; one felt, on following the narrow pathways, that there must exist subterranean lakes which pierced through beneath the moss and availed themselves of the smallest crevices at the feet of trees or between the rocks to burst forth in crystalline fountains.  The whispering voices of these brooks were so numerous and so loud that they drowned the song of the bullfinches.  It was like some enchanted park with cascades falling from every portion.

Below the meadows were damp.  Gigantic chestnut trees cast dark shadows.  On the borders of the meadows long hedges of poplars exhibited in lines their rustling branches.  Two avenues of enormous plane trees stretched across the fields toward the ancient Chateau de Gagny, then a mass of ruins.  In this constantly watered district the grass grew to an extraordinary height.  It resembled a garden between two wooded hills, a natural garden, of which the meadows were the lawns, the giant trees marking the colossal flower beds.  When the sun’s rays at noon poured straight downward the shadows assumed a bluish tint; scorched grass slept in the heat, while an icy shiver passed beneath the foliage.

And there it was that Pere Merlier’s mill enlivened with its ticktack a corner of wild verdure.  The structure, built of plaster and planks, seemed as old as the world.  It dipped partially in the Morelle, which rounded at that point into a transparent basin.  A sluice had been made, and the water fell from a height of several meters upon the mill wheel, which cracked as it turned, with the asthmatic cough of a faithful servant grown old in the house.  When Pere Merlier was advised to change it he shook his head, saying that a new wheel would be lazier and would not so well understand the work, and he mended the old one with whatever he could put his hands on:  cask staves, rusty iron, zinc and lead.  The wheel appeared gayer than ever for it, with its profile grown odd, all plumed with grass and moss.  When the water beat upon it with its silvery flood it was covered with pearls; its strange carcass wore a sparkling attire of necklaces of mother-of-pearl.