We resumed our walks, and he profited by them to discourse learnedly about everything we came across—a leaf led him on to botany, entomology was suggested by a beetle; a drop of rain let loose upon my admiration a deluge of chemistry, and when we had got to the edge of the forest, I had heard from Lerne’s lips the lecturing of a whole collegeful of dons.
But, it was there, at the edge of the woods and fields that one should have seen him. After the last tree had been passed, he never failed to stop, hauled himself up to the top of a boundary stone, and held forth concerning the Universe, in presence of the plains and the heavens.
He described things so ingeniously, that one could believe one saw Nature unfold and open to the very depths of the earth, and to the very ends of Infinity.
His words knew equally well how to dig into the hills to lay bare the strata of the soil, as to bring near to us, the better to discourse about them, the invisible planets.
He knew how to analyze the vapor of the clouds, as well as to show the origin of the cold wind—to evoke prehistoric landscapes, and to prove in the same way the unending future of the countryside.
He roamed in spirit with his eyes over the immense panorama, from the hut near at hand, to those wide horizons—the distant tints of blue.
In a few words each thing was defined, explained, and illuminated by commentary, and as he made sweeping gestures to every point of the compass, to draw attention now to a river, and now to a steeple, his outspread arms seemed to lengthen into rays, like those of a lighthouse, which sheds its long protecting beams over the countryside.
The return to Fonval usually took place in less scientific circumstances. My uncle continued his speculations which he would keep to himself, assuming them, I suppose, to be too abstruse for my intelligence, and he hummed as he went along, his favorite air, which I suppose he had learnt from one of his assistants, “Rum fil dum.”
Once we got back, he hastened to the laboratory, or the hothouse.
We varied these walks with expeditions in the motor-car, and then my uncle put himself astride another hobby-horse. He classed my vehicle in its rank amongst animal categories, showed the creatures of to-day, of yesterday, and of to-morrow, among which, no doubt, the automobile would take its place, and this prophecy finished up with a warm panegyric of my 80 h. p.