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MORNING TALK.
Doctor Desprez always rose early.

Before the smoke arose, before the first cart rattled over the bridge to the day's labour in the fields, he was to be found wandering in his garden.

Now he would pick a bunch of grapes; now he would eat a big pear under the trellice; now he would draw all sorts of fancies on the path with the end of his cane; now he would go down and watch the river running endlessly past the timber landing- place at which he moored his boat.

There was no time, he used to say, for making theories like the early morning.