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In the afternoon, when she condescended to walk in the garden, the lake was covered with tritons and nereids; the pages of the family were converted into wood-nymphs, who peeped from every bower; and the footmen gamboled over the lawns in the figure of satyrs.
In summer days they gamboled in the meadow, plucking the sweet wild grasses and often and often they clambered up the mountain side, knee deep in the heather, searching for frechans and wild honey, and sometimes they found a bird's nest but they only peeped into it, they never touched the eggs or allowed their breath to fall upon them, for next to their little mother they loved the mountain, and next to the mountain they loved the wild birds who made the spring and summer weather musical with their songs.
"But you, Caroline dear, you who, between ourselves, were admitted among the big girls while I still gamboled among the little ones, you whose only sin was pride, you, at the age of twenty-seven, and with a dowry of two hundred thousand francs, capture and captivate a truly great man, one of the wittiest men in Paris, one of the two talented men that our village has produced. What luck!
Painted butterflies and gnats circled in the warm air; green lizards gamboled among the rocks that cut the turf. Flocks of autumn birds swooped round in rapid flight. Some freshly-shorn sheep, led by a ragged child, cropped the short herbage fragrant with strong herbs. A bristly pig carrying a bell about his neck, ran wildly up and down the grassy slope in search of chestnuts.
"But you, Caroline dear, you who, between ourselves, were admitted among the big girls while I still gamboled among the little ones, you whose only sin was pride, you, at the age of twenty-seven, and with a dowry of two hundred thousand francs, capture and captivate a truly great man, one of the wittiest men in Paris, one of the two talented men that our village has produced. What luck!
They came back, bright as the immortal notes that lighted them, those faded pictures and those fleeted days; the cottage, the old mother's tears when he left her without one grain of sorrow; the village-church and its simple chimes; the clover-field hard by in which he lay and gamboled, while the lark praised God overhead; the chubby playmates that never grew to be wicked, the sweet hours of youth and innocence and home.
On those fine meadows grazed the graceful Jersey; there gamboled sundry long-tailed colts with long-tailed pedigrees; there greedy Berkshires fattened themselves to abnormal proportions; and the merinos could hardly walk, for the weight of their own rich wardrobes.
And yet so little was the pace to him that he fairly gamboled in playfulness as he went slashing along, until the deacon verily began to fear that the honest old chap would break through all the bounds of propriety and send his heels anticly through his treasured dashboard.
Two bull pups which had flown at him with portentous growls and yelps of menace now gamboled idiotically about him, writhing with anticipation of caresses, and a gray and scarlet parrot, rudely awakened, launched forth upon a musical effort resembling the song of a rusty cart-wheel.
Sometimes, Conrad told his little sister stories or, when arrived at the red memorial post, would lead her a short distance up the side-road and tell her that here one could get on the Snow-Mountain, that up there were great rocks and stones, that the chamois gamboled and great birds circled about up there.
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