In our time, the dream of all youngsters who went to school was to play truant, once at least, in a thoroughly successful manner. To have accomplished this was to be regarded by the others as on a par with brigands, pirates, and other heroes. In Provence it is the custom for such an exploit to be carried out by running away to a far and unknown country, being careful to confide the project to no one. The time chosen by the young Provençal for this adventure is when he has, by some fault, or the sad error of disobedience, good cause to fear that on his return home he will be welcomed rather too warmly! When, therefore, this fate looms over some unlucky fellow, he just gives school and parents the slip, and defying consequences, off he goes on his travels with a “Long live liberty!” Oh, the delight, the joy, at that age to feel complete master of oneself, and the bridle hanging loose, to roam where fancy beckons, away into the blue distance, down into the swamp, or may be up to the mountain heights! But--after a while comes hunger. Playing truant in the summer time, that evil is not so serious. There are fields of broad beans, fair orchards with their crops of apples, pears, and peaches, cherry-trees delighting the eye, fig-trees offering their ripe fruit, and bulging melons that cry out “Eat me.” And then those lovely vines, the stock of the golden grape. Ah!--I fancy I can see them yet! Of course if the game was played in winter, things were not quite so smiling. Some young scamps would boldly visit farms where they were unknown and ask for food, and some again, more unscrupulous rascals, would steal the eggs and even take the stale nest-egg, drinking and gulping it down with relish. Others, however, were of prouder stuff; they had not run away from home and school for any misdemeanour, but either from pure thirst of independence or because of some injustice which, having deeply wounded the heart, made the victim flee man and his habitation. These would pass the nights sleeping amidst the corn, in the fields of millet, sometimes under a bridge or in some shed or straw-stack. When hungry they gathered from the hedges and the fields mulberries, sloes, almonds left on the trees, or little bunches of grapes from the wild vine. They did not even object to the fruit of the wych-elm, which they called white bread, nor unearthed onions, choke-pears, beech-nuts, nor at a pinch to acorns. For to all these truants each day was a glorious game, and every step a bound of delight. What need of companions when all the beasts and insects were your playfellows? You could understand what they were after, what they said, what they thought, and they appeared to understand you quite as well.