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The morning came with all the glories of a northern sunrise, and the weather was perfect. After two short portages and two small lakes were crossed, Pete said, "Now we make last portage and we reach Michikamau." It was not a long portage a half mile, perhaps. We passed through a thick-grown defile, Pete ahead, and I close behind him.
I yearned to obey, ... I struggled to rise my efforts were in vain; when, to my joy and wonder, a small, invisible hand, delicate yet strong, clasped mine, and I was borne aloft with breathless, indescribable, lightning-like rapidity on ... on ... and ever upward, till at last, alighting on a smooth, fair turf, thick-grown with fragrant blossoms of strange loveliness and soft hues, I beheld Her! ... and she bade me welcome."
We are well up on the rocky slope; an abandoned stone-quarry lies back of us, up the hill a bit; and leading into the village, half a mile away, is a picturesque country road, overhung with sumacs and honey locusts overtopped on one side by a precipitous pasture, and on the other dropping suddenly to a beach thick-grown to willows, maples, and scrub sycamores.
He would go where he might see the living models of his peasant friends for ever before him; where he could watch them leaning over the plough pressed deep into the earth; cutting the faggots with stout arms in the thick-grown copses; driving the cattle home at milking time with weary feet, along the endless, straight white high-roads of the French rural districts.
Immovable I stood, and had no other motion but that of a heart all panting, which lent a feeble trembling to my tongue, and even when I would have spoke to her, it sent a sigh up to prevent my boldness; and oh, Octavio, though I have been bred in all the saucy daring of a forward lover, yet now I wanted a convenient impudence; awed with a haughty sweetness in her look, like a Fauxbrave after a vigorous onset, finding the danger fly so thick around him, sheers off, and dares not face the pressing foe, struck with too fierce a lightning from her eyes, whence the gods sent a thousand winged darts, I veiled my own, and durst not play with fire: while thus she hotly did pursue her conquest, and I stood fixed on the defensive part, I heard a rustling among the thick-grown leaves, and through their mystic windings soon perceived the good old Count of Clarinau approaching, muttering and mumbling to old Dormina, the dragon appointed to guard this lovely treasure, and which she having left alone in the thicket, and had retired but at an awful distance, had most extremely disobliged her lord.
By eight o'clock we four had ensconced ourselves in hiding-places on all sides of the little inn, having tethered our horses within a small but thick-grown covert above the rise that led to the inn door. Here I stationed myself and for better vision climbed a tree wherefrom I commanded the whole situation.
The track forms a circuit of two thousand metres, and occupies quite the best half of the Pelouse, closed in on one side by the thick-grown Forêt de Chantilly and flanked, in part, on the other by the historic Écuries, with the Tribune, or grand stand, just to the south.
Rather dingy villages, these each, after their kind, with a stone wharf thick-grown with weeds; a flouring mill at the head of the landing; a few cheap-looking, battlemented stores; boys and men lounging about with that air of comfortable idling which impresses one as the main characteristic of rustic hamlets, where nobody seems ever to have anything to do; a ferry running to the opposite shore for cattle and wagons, a heavy flat, with railings, made to drift with the current; and for foot passengers, a lumbering skiff, with oars chucking noisily in their roomy locks.
Their next halt was at the entrance into a very thick-grown part of the woods, and where an old trunk of a tree stood, which was hollow and very large; and in this tree they both took their standing, resolving to see there what might offer.
He would go where he might see the living models of his peasant friends for ever before him; where he could watch them leaning over the plough pressed deep into the earth; cutting the faggots with stout arms in the thick-grown copses; driving the cattle home at milking time with weary feet, along the endless, straight white high-roads of the French rural districts.
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