[节选]THE MILLERS DAUGHTER

CHAPTER I
THE BETROTHAL

Pere Merlier's mill, one beautiful summer evening, was arranged for

a grand fete.  In the courtyard were three tables, placed end to

end, which awaited the guests.  Everyone knew that Francoise,

Merlier's daughter, was that night to be betrothed to Dominique, a

young man who was accused of idleness but whom the fair sex for

three leagues around gazed at with sparkling eyes, such a fine

appearance had he.



Pere Merlier's mill was pleasing to look upon.  It stood exactly in

the center of Rocreuse, where the highway made an elbow.  The

village had but one street, with two rows of huts, a row on each

side of the road; but at the elbow meadows spread out, and huge

trees which lined the banks of the Morelle covered the extremity of

the valley with lordly shade.  There was not, in all Lorraine, a

corner of nature more adorable.  To the right and to the left thick

woods, centenarian forests, towered up from gentle slopes, filling

the horizon with a sea of verdure, while toward the south the plain

stretched away, of marvelous fertility, displaying as far as the eye

could reach patches of ground divided by green hedges.  But what

constituted the special charm of Rocreuse was the coolness of that

cut of verdure in the most sultry days of July and August.  The

Morelle descended from the forests of Gagny and seemed to have

gathered the cold from the foliage beneath which it flowed for

leagues; it brought with it the murmuring sounds, the icy and

concentrated shade of the woods.  And it was not the sole source of

coolness: all sorts of flowing streams gurgled through the forest;

at each step springs bubbled up; one felt, on following the narrow

pathways, that there must exist subterranean lakes which pierced

through beneath the moss and availed themselves of the smallest

crevices at the feet of trees or between the rocks to burst forth in

crystalline fountains.  The whispering voices of these brooks were

so numerous and so loud that they drowned the song of the

bullfinches.  It was like some enchanted park with cascades falling

from every portion.



Below the meadows were damp.  Gigantic chestnut trees cast dark

shadows.  On the borders of the meadows long hedges of poplars

exhibited in lines their rustling branches.  Two avenues of enormous

plane trees stretched across the fields toward the ancient Chateau

de Gagny, then a mass of ruins.  In this constantly watered district

the grass grew to an extraordinary height.  It resembled a garden

between two wooded hills, a natural garden, of which the meadows

were the lawns, the giant trees marking the colossal flower beds. 

When the sun's rays at noon poured straight downward the shadows

assumed a bluish tint; scorched grass slept in the heat, while an

icy shiver passed beneath the foliage.