These slopes and roundnesses are as expressive as human forms; but how much more varied, how much stranger and richer in attitudes? Those there on the horizon, almost hid behind a troop of others, smile dimly in their timidness, under their crown of vapory gauze; they form a round on the brink of heaven, a fleeting round that the least disturbance of the air would put out of sight, and which yet regards with tenderness the fretted creatures lost in its bosom. Others, their neighbors, rudely dint the soil with their haunches and their brown slopes; the human structure here half peeps forth, then disappears under the mineral barbarism; here are the children of another age, ever powerful, severe still, unknown and antique races, whose mysterious history the mind searches without willing it. Tawny moors filled with herds mount upon their flanks to the summits; splendid meadows sparkle upon their back. Some among these plunge abruptly away down into depths where they disgorge the streams that they accumulate, and where is gathered all the heat of the burning vault which shines above under the most generous sun. It, meanwhile, embraces and broods over the country; from woods, plains, hills, the great soul of vegetation starts forth mounting to meet its rays.
Here your neighbor, who is engaged in a warm dispute, pulls your sleeve, crying: “The gigot at Orthez doesn’t give cramps in the stomach, does it, sir?”
You start; then in another moment you turn your nose toward the window. But the sensation has disappeared: the mutton of Dax has blotted out everything. The meadows are so many kilogrammes of unmown hay, the trees are so many feet of timber, and the herds are only walking beefsteaks.
