And, in this spring especially, the cows, his neighbors, excited doubtless by the smell of new-mown hay, moved all night, were agitated in dreams, making their bells tintillate continually.
Often, after the long expeditions at night, he regained his sleep in the afternoon, extended in the shade in some corner of moss and grass.

Like the other smugglers, he was not an early riser for a village boy, and he woke up sometimes long after daybreak, when already, between the disjointed planks of his flooring, rays of a vivid and gay light came from the stable below, the door of which remained open always to the rising sun after the departure of the cattle to their pastures.

Then, he went to his window, pushed open the little, old blinds made of massive chestnut wood painted in olive, and leaned on his elbows, placed on the sill of the thick wall, to look at the clouds or at the sun of the new morning.
What he saw, around his house, was green, green, magnificently green, as are in the spring all the corners of that land of shade and of rain.
The ferns which, in the autumn, have so warm a rusty color, were now, in this April, in the glory of their greenest freshness and covered the slopes of the mountains as with an immense carpet of curly wool, where foxglove flowers made pink spots.

In a ravine, the torrent roared under branches.

Above, groups of oaks and of beeches clung to the slopes, alternating with prairies; then, above this tranquil Eden, toward the sky, ascended the grand, denuded peak of the Gizune, sovereign hill of the region of the clouds.