You
must have risen in the morning and seen the woods as they are by day,
kindled and coloured in the sun's light; you must have felt the odour
of innumerable trees at even, the unsparing heat along the forest
roads, and the coolness of the groves.
And on the first morning you will doubtless rise betimes. If you
have not been wakened before by the visit of some adventurous pigeon,
you will be wakened as soon as the sun can reach your window - for
there are no blind or shutters to keep him out - and the room, with
its bare wood floor and bare whitewashed walls, shines all round you
in a sort of glory of reflected lights. You may doze a while longer
by snatches, or lie awake to study the charcoal men and dogs and
horses with which former occupants have defiled the partitions:
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.
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