Don't the fogs on the meadows look like clouds fallen from the skies?
I am cold." "Draw your cloak closer." "How it rains and hails! One would think it was winter.

The water in the canals looks black, and yonder--see--what is that ?" A tavern stood beside the road, and just in front of it a single lofty elm towered towards the sky.

Its trunk, bare as a mast, had grown straight up without separating into branches until it attained the height of a house.

Spring had as yet lured no leaves from the boughs, but there were many objects to be seen in the bare top of the tree.

A small flag, bearing the colors of the House of Orange, was fastened to one branch, from another hung a large doll, which at a distance strongly resembled a man dressed in black, an old hat dangled from a third, and a fourth supported a piece of white pasteboard, on which might be read in large black letters, which the rain was already beginning to efface: "Good luck to Orange, to the Spaniard death.
So Peter Quatgelat welcomes his guests." This tree, with its motley adornments, offered a by no means pleasant spectacle, seen in the grey, cold, misty atmosphere of the rainy April morning.
Ravens had alighted beside the doll swaying to and fro in the wind, probably mistaking it for a man.