Imagine at thirty paces from an avenue, a pool—­no, not a pool (the word is incorrect), nor yet a pond—­but a fountain hollowed out by the removal of a giant oak.  Since the death of this monarch the birches which its branches kept apart have never closed together, and the fountain forms the centre of a little clearing where the moss is thick at all seasons and starred in August with wild pinks.  The water, though deep, is deliciously clear.  At a depth of more than six feet you can distinguish the dead leaves at the bottom, the grass, the twigs, and here and there a stone’s iridescent outline.  They all lie asleep there, the waste of seasons gone by, soon to be covered by others in their turn.  From time to time out of the depths of these submerged thickets an eft darts up.  He comes circling up, quivering his yellowbanded tail, snatches a mouthful of air, and goes down again head first.  Save for these alarms the pool is untroubled.  It is guarded from the winds by a juniper, which an eglantine has chosen for its guardian and crowns each year with a wreath of roses.  Each year, too, a blackbird makes his nest here.  We keep his secret.  He knows we shall not disturb him.  And when I come back to this little nook in the woods, which custom has endeared to us, merely by looking in the water I feel my very heart refreshed.

“What a spot to sleep in!” cried Lampron.  “Keep sentry, Fabien; I am going to take a nap.”

We had walked fast.  It was very hot.  He took off his coat, rolled it into a pillow, and placed it beneath his head as he lay down on the grass.  I stretched myself prone on a velvety carpet of moss, and gave myself up to a profound investigation of the one square foot of ground which lay beneath my eyes.  The number of blades of grass was prodigious.  A few, already awned, stood above their fellows, waving like palms-meadowgrass, fescue, foxtail, brome-grass—­each slender stalk crowned with a tuft.  Others were budding, only half unfolded, amid the darker mass of spongy moss which gave them sustenance.  Amid the numberless shafts thus raised toward heaven a thousand paths crisscrossed, each full of obstacles-chips of bark, juniper-berries, beech-nuts, tangled roots, hills raised by burrowing insects, ravines formed by the draining off of the rains.  Ants and beetles bustled along them, pressing up hill and down to some mysterious goal.  Above them a cunning red spider was tying a blade of grass to an orchid leaf, the pillars it had chosen for its future web; and when the wind shook the leaves and the sun pierced through to this spot, I saw the delicate roof already mapped out.

I do not know how long my contemplation lasted.  The woods were still.  Save for a swarm of gnats which hummed in a minor key around the sleeping Lampron, nothing stirred, not a leaf even.  All nature was silent as it drank in the full sunshine.

A murmur of distant voices stole on my ear.  I rose, and crept through the birches and hazels to the edge of the glade.