"What did he want to say?" cried Joubert, whose temper seemed sharper than usual. "Why, that the price of cabbages has gone up. What else would he have to say to me at this hour of the night? Mordieu! If I could be there!"
"Where, Joubert?"
But Joubert did not reply.
Next morning the fine weather still held, and I was up at dawn. It was no trouble to get up early when one lived in the pavilion. The birds wakened one; and, then, the forest!
In the very early morning, the forest, like the sea, is full of tender lights. Shadows and trees are equally unsubstantial, the rides are wreathed in vague mists, the last star has not quite faded from the sky, and the voice of the thrush comes from the glens as in the story of Vitigab, crying: "Deep—down deep—there somewhere in the darkness I see a ray of light." The hollow tapping of the woodpecker comes from the beech glades, whilst the rabbits shake the dew from their fur, and the rustle of the stoat comes from the ferns; a nut falls, and, looking up, you see against the sky, where the treetops are waving in the palest sapphire air, the squirrel, the sweetest of all wood things.
You observe one another and he is gone, and the wind draws up from leagues away like the rustling of a silken skirt, till, suddenly, the whole forest draws breath. You can hear it waking from its slumber just as at dusk you can hear it falling to sleep; for the forest is a living thing, a thing that breathes and speaks and has its dreams.
I was out early this morning, for I was going to breakfast with Fauchard. I passed the glades where the rabbits were sporting, chasing each other in circles smoothly and for all the world like toy rabbits on wheels and driven by clockwork. I passed the pools where the bulrushes stood up out of the mist, and nothing spoke of water save the splash of the frog, or the ripple of the water-rat swimming.
Fauchard was waiting for me. We had breakfast—a simple enough repast, consisting of coffee, biscuits, and cheese—and then we started off to visit the traps and see what they had caught.
When Fauchard had collected his harvest of stoats and moles, killed two snakes, and shot a marauding cat, it was late morning; the sun was well over the treetops, and it was time for me to return home.