Thiers, With Wily Profile; Local Celebrities, Pipe In
Hand; Or, Maybe, A Romantic Landscape Splashed In Oil.
Meanwhile
artist after artist drops into the salle-a-manger for coffee, and
then shoulders easel, sunshade, stool, and
Paint-box, bound into a
fagot, and sets of for what he calls his 'motive.' And artist
after artist, as he goes out of the village, carries with him a
little following of dogs. For the dogs, who belong only nominally
to any special master, hang about the gate of the forest all day
long, and whenever any one goes by who hits their fancy, profit by
his escort, and go forth with him to play an hour or two at
hunting. They would like to be under the trees all day. But they
cannot go alone. They require a pretext. And so they take the
passing artist as an excuse to go into the woods, as they might
take a walking-stick as an excuse to bathe. With quick ears, long
spines, and bandy legs, or perhaps as tall as a greyhound and with
a bulldog's head, this company of mongrels will trot by your side
all day and come home with you at night, still showing white teeth
and wagging stunted tail. Their good humour is not to be
exhausted. You may pelt them with stones if you please, and all
they will do is to give you a wider berth. If once they come out
with you, to you they will remain faithful, and with you return;
although if you meet them next morning in the street, it is as like
as not they will cut you with a countenance of brass.
The forest - a strange thing for an Englishman - is very destitute of
birds. This is no country where every patch of wood among the
meadows gibes up an increase of song, and every valley wandered
through by a streamlet rings and reverberates from side to with a
profusion of clear notes. And this rarity of birds is not to be
regretted on its own account only. For the insects prosper in
their absence, and become as one of the plagues of Egypt. Ants
swarm in the hot sand; mosquitos drone their nasal drone; wherever
the sun finds a hole in the roof of the forest, you see a myriad
transparent creatures coming and going in the shaft of light; and
even between-whiles, even where there is no incursion of sun-rays
into the dark arcade of the wood, you are conscious of a continual
drift of insects, an ebb and flow of infinitesimal living things
between the trees. Nor are insects the only evil creatures that
haunt the forest. For you may plump into a cave among the rocks,
and find yourself face to face with a wild boar, or see a crooked
viper slither across the road.
Perhaps you may set yourself down in the bay between two spreading
beech-roots with a book on your lap, and be awakened all of a
sudden by a friend:
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