Oh, you
architects! you architects!--you are always finding antiquities
everywhere. Luckily I had not my spectacles on, or I should have smashed
them against that tree; but now I shall be obliged to find a bed
somewhere among the bushes. What a road this is!--nothing but ruts, and
holes, and pits, and loose rocks and boulders!"
In one of those moments when the good man, getting exhausted, was
stopping for breath, he thought he could hear the grating of a saw far
down the valley. What was his joy when he became certain that it was
that!
"Heaven be praised!" he cried, plucking up his spirits; "now to push on
with halting steps. Now I shall get a little rest. What a lesson this
will be for me! Providence had compassion upon my rheumatism. What an
old fool to go and expose myself to have to lie out in the woods at my
time of life, to ruin my health and undermine my constitution! I shall
remember this! Never shall I forget this warning!"
In a quarter of an hour the noise of falling water became more distinct;
then a faint light broke through the trees. Maitre Bernard then found
himself at the top of the wood; he observed below the heath a stream
running down the winding valley as far as he could see, and just before
him the saw-mill, with its long dark posts and beams crossing and
recrossing in the gloom like a huge spider.
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