“But,” she responded, “to be well one must live in the sunshine. Ah, how happy it makes me to see you again!” Pascal, with the eye of the physician, had examined his nephew critically. He embraced him in his turn. “Goodday, my boy. And she is right, mind you; one can be well only out in the sunshine—like the trees.” Félicité had gone hastily to the house. She returned, crying: “Charles is not here, then?” “No,” said Clotilde. “We went to see him yesterday. Uncle Macquart has taken him, and he is to remain for a few days at the Tulettes.” Félicité was in despair. She had come only in the certainty of finding the boy at Pascal’s. What was to be done now? The doctor, with his tranquil air, proposed to write to Uncle Macquart, who would bring him back in the morning. But when he learned that Maxime wished positively to go away again by the nine o’clock train, without remaining over night, another idea occurred to him. He would send to the livery stable for a landau, and all four would go to see Charles at Uncle Macquart’s. It would even be a delightful drive. It was not quite three leagues from Plassans to the Tulettes—an hour to go, and an hour to return, and they would still have almost two hours to remain there, if they wished to be back by seven. Martine would get dinner, and Maxime would have time enough to dine and catch his train. But Félicité objected, visibly disquieted by this visit to Macquart. “Oh, no, indeed! If you think I am going down there in this frightful weather, you are mistaken. It is much simpler to send some one to bring Charles to us.” Pascal shook his head. Charles was not always to be brought back when one wished. He was a boy without reason, who sometimes, if the whim seized him, would gallop off like an untamed animal. And old Mme. Rougon, overruled and furious at having been unable to make any preparation, was at last obliged to yield, in the necessity in which she found herself of leaving the matter to chance. “Well, be it as you wish, then! Good Heavens, how unfortunately things have turned out!” Martine hurried away to order the landau, and before three o’clock had struck the horses were on the Nice road, descending the declivity which slopes down to the bridge over the Viorne. Then they turned to the left, and followed the wooded banks of the river for about two miles. After this the road entered the gorges of the Seille, a narrow pass between two giant walls of rock scorched by the ardent rays of the summer sun. Pine trees pushed their way through the clefts; clumps of trees, scarcely thicker at the roots than tufts of grass, fringed the crests and hung over the abyss. It was a chaos; a blasted landscape, a mouth of hell, with its wild turns, its droppings of blood-colored earth sliding down from every cut, its desolate solitude invaded only by the eagles’ flight.