You caught a grasshopper and examined her little shining wings. Very gently you stroked her with your hand to make her sing, then sent her away with a straw in her mouth. Or, resting full length on a bank, you find a lady-bird climbing up your finger, and at once you sing to her: “Lady-bird, fly, Be off to the school,” &c. and as the lady-bird stretches her wings she replies: “Go home yourself--I am quite happy where I am.” Then a praying-mantis kneels before you and you ask: “Praying-mantis, art so wise, Know you where the sly fox lies?” The mantis raises a long thin arm and points to the mountains. A lizard sits warming himself in the sun and you address him with the correct formula: “Little lizard, be my friend ’Gainst all snakes that bite and bend, Then I’ll give you grains of salt When before my house you halt.” “Your house! And when will you be back there?” the lizard says as plainly as you could yourself, and, with a whisk, disappears in his hole. Should you meet a snail, you greet him in this fashion: “Oh, snail with one eye, Your horns let me spy, Or the blacksmith I’ll call To smash house and all.” It was home, always home, to which every one harked back; till at last, after having destroyed sufficient nests--and made sufficient holes in nether garments--being weary of pipes made from barley-straws and of whistles made of willow twigs, besides having set one’s teeth on edge with green apples and other sour fruit, suddenly the truant is seized with home-sickness, a great longing at the heart turns the feet homewards and lowers the once proud head. Being of true Provençal stock, I also must needs make my escapade before I had been three months at school. It happened thus. Three or four young rascals, who, under pretext of cutting grass or collecting wood, idled away the livelong day, came to meet me one morning as I set out for school at Maillane. “You little simpleton, what do you want to go to school for?” said they. “Boxed in all day between four walls, punished for this or that, your fingers rapped with a ruler! Bah! come and play with us----!” Ah me! how crystal clear the water ran in the brook; how the larks sang up there in the blue; the cornflowers, the iris, the poppies, the rose-campions, how fair they bloomed in the sunshine which played on the green meadows. So I said to myself: “School! Well, that can wait till to-morrow.” And then, with trousers turned up, off we went to the water. We paddled, we splashed, we fished for tadpoles, we made mud pies, and then smeared our bare little legs with black slime to make ourselves boots! Afterwards, in the dust of some hollow by the wayside, we played at soldiers: Rataplan, Rataplan, I’m a military man, &c. What fun it was! no king’s children were our equals. And then with the bread and provisions in my satchel, we had a fine picnic on the grass.