But you work on:  an enthusiasm has taken possession of you; the paints mix too slowly; you use your thumb, smearing and blending with a bit of rag—­anything for the effect.  One moment you are glued to your seat, your eye riveted on your canvas, the next, you are up and backing away, taking it in as a whole, then pouncing down upon it quickly, belaboring it with your brush.  Soon the trees take shape; the sky forms become definite; the meadow lies flat and loses itself in the fringe of willows.

When all of this begins to grow upon your once blank canvas, and some lucky pat matches the exact tone of blue-gray haze or shimmer of leaf, or some accidental blending of color delights you with its truth, a tingling goes down your backbone, and a rush surges through your veins that stirs you as nothing else in your whole life will ever do.  The reaction comes the next day when, in the cold light of your studio, you see how far short you have come and how crude and false is your best touch compared with the glory of the landscape in your mind and heart.  But the thrill that it gave you will linger forever.

But I hear a voice behind me calling out:—­

“Monsieur, mamma says that dinner will be ready in half an hour.  Please do not be late.”

It is Lucette.  She and Francois have come down in the other boat—­the one with the little seat.  They have moved so noiselessly that I have not even heard them.  The sketch is nearly finished; and so, remembering the good madame, and the Roquefort, and the olives, and the many times I have kept her waiting, I wash my brushes at once, throw my traps into the boat, and pull back through the winding turn, Francois taking the mill-race, and in the swiftest part springing to the bank and towing Lucette, who sits in the stern, her white skirts tucked around her dainty feet.

“Sacre! He is here. C’est merveilleux! Why did you come?”

“Because you sent for me, madame, and I am hungry.”

“Mon Dieu! He is hungry, and no chicken!”

It is true.  The chicken was served that morning to another tramp for breakfast, and madame had forgotten all about it, and had ransacked the settlement for its mate.  She was too honest a cook to chase another into the frying-pan.

But there was a filet with mushrooms, and a most surprising salad of chicory fresh from the garden, and the pease were certain, and the Roquefort and the olives beyond question.  All this she tells me as I walk past the table covered with a snow-white cloth and spread under the grape-vines overlooking the stream, with the trees standing against the sky, their long shadows wrinkling down into the water.

I enter the summer kitchen built out into the garden, which also covers the old well, let down the bucket, and then, taking the clean crash towel from its hook, place the basin on the bench in the sunlight, and plunge my head into the cool water.  Madame regards me curiously, her arms akimbo, re-hangs the towel, and asks:—­