As in the mirages of the desert, in each as it rises, I see some image of which my mind had been longing for the reality.
At first the vapor increases, and its color deepens.

I see a cottage on a hillside: behind is a garden shut in by a whitethorn hedge, and through the garden runs a brook, on the banks of which I hear the bees humming.
Then the view opens still more.

See those fields planted with apple-trees, in which I can distinguish a plough and horses waiting for their master! Farther on, in a part of the wood which rings with the sound of the axe, I perceive the woodsman's hut, roofed with turf and branches; and, in the midst of all these rural pictures, I seem to see a figure of myself gliding about.

It is my ghost walking in my dream! The bubbling of the water, ready to boil over, compels me to break off my meditations, in order to fill up the coffee-pot.

I then remember that I have no cream; I take my tin can off the hook and go down to the milkwoman's.
Mother Denis is a hale countrywoman from Savoy, which she left when quite young; and, contrary to the custom of the Savoyards, she has not gone back to it again.