On my left was a village
called Champieu (_Campus Pagani_, according to the Cure). On my right I
could see across the cornfields the two crocketed, rustic spires of
Saint-Andre-des-Champs, themselves as tapering, scaly, plated,
honeycombed, yellowed, and roughened as two ears of wheat.
At regular intervals, among the inimitable ornamentation of their leaves,
which can be mistaken for those of no other fruit-tree, the apple-trees
were exposing their broad petals of white satin, or hanging in shy bunches
their unopened, blushing buds. It was while going the 'Meseglise way' that
I first noticed the circular shadow which apple-trees cast upon the sunlit
ground, and also those impalpable threads of golden silk which the setting
sun weaves slantingly downwards from beneath their leaves, and which I
would see my father slash through with his stick without ever making them
swerve from their straight path.
Sometimes in the afternoon sky a white moon would creep up like a little
cloud, furtive, without display, suggesting an actress who does not have
to 'come on' for a while, and so goes 'in front' in her ordinary clothes
to watch the rest of the company for a moment, but keeps in the
background, not wishing to attract attention to herself.
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