Amidst that tremendous luxuriance of vegetation even lengthy scrutiny could barely make out the bygone plan of the Paradou.  In the foreground, in a sort of immense amphitheatre, must have lain the flower garden, whose fountains were now sunken and dry, its stone balustrades shattered, its flight of steps all warped, and its statues overthrown, patches of their whiteness gleaming amidst the dusky stretches of turf.  Farther back, behind the blue line of a sheet of water, stretched a maze of fruit-trees; farther still rose towering woodland, its dusky, violet depths streaked with bands of light.  It was a forest which had regained virginity, an endless stretch of tree-tops rising one above the other, tinged with yellowish green and pale green and vivid green, according to the variety of the species.

On the right, the forest scaled some hills, dotting them with little clumps of pine-trees, and dying away in straggling brushwood, while a huge barrier of barren rock, heaped together like the fallen wreckage of a mountain, shut out all view beyond.  Flaming growths there cleaved the rugged soil, monstrous plants lay motionless in the heat, like drowsing reptiles; a silvery streak, a foamy splash that glistened in the distance like a cloud of pearls, revealed the presence of a waterfall, the source of those tranquil streams that lazily skirted the flower-garden.  Lastly, on the left the river flowed through a vast stretch of meadowland, where it parted into four streamlets which winded fitfully beneath the rushes, between the willows, behind the taller trees.  And far away into the distance grassy patches prolonged the lowland freshness, forming a landscape steeped in bluish haze, where a gleam of daylight slowly melted into the verdant blue of sunset.  The Paradou—­its flower-garden, forest, rocks, streams, and meadows—­filled the whole breadth of sky.

‘The Paradou!’ stammered Serge, stretching out his arms as if to clasp the entire garden to his breast.

He tottered, and Albine had to seat him in an armchair.  There he sat for two whole hours intently gazing, without opening his lips, his chin resting on his hands.  At times his eyelids fluttered and a flush rose to his cheeks.  Slowly he looked, profoundly amazed.  It was all too vast, too complex, too overpowering.

‘I cannot see, I cannot understand,’ he cried, stretching out his hands to Albine with a gesture of uttermost weariness.

The girl came and leant over the back of his armchair.  Taking his head between her hands, she compelled him to look again, and softly said: 

’It’s all our own.  Nobody will ever come in.  When you are well again, we will go for walks there.  We shall have room enough for walking all our lives.  We’ll go wherever you like.  Where would you like to go?’

He smiled.

‘Oh! not far,’ he murmured.  ’The first day only two steps or so beyond the door.  I should surely fall——­ See, I’ll go over there, under that tree close to the window.’