A fortnight later, the tub is no longer enough. It contains neither cresses crammed with tiny Shellfish nor Worms and Tadpoles, dainty morsels both. The time has come for dives and hunts amid the tangle of the water-weeds; and for us the day of trouble has also come. True, the miller, down by the brook, has fine ducks, easy and cheap to rear; the tallow-smelter, who has extolled his burnt fat so loudly, has some as well, for he possesses the advantage of the waste water from the spring at the bottom of the village; but how are we, right up there, at the top, to procure aquatic sports for our broods? In summer we have hardly water to drink! Near the house, in a freestone recess, a scanty spring trickles into a basin made in the rock. Four or five families have, like ourselves, to draw their water there in copper pails. By the time that the schoolmaster’s donkey has slaked her thirst and the neighbours have taken their provision for the day, the basin is dry. We have to wait for four-and-twenty hours for it to fill. No, this is not the hole in which the ducks would delight, nor indeed in which they would be tolerated. There remains the brook. To go down to it with the troop of ducklings is fraught with danger. On the way through the village we might meet cats, bold ravishers of small poultry; some surly mongrel might frighten and scatter the little band; and it would be a hard puzzle to collect it in its entirety. We must avoid the traffic and take refuge in peaceful and sequestered spots. On the hills, the path that climbs behind the château soon takes a sudden turn and widens into a small plain beside the meadows. It skirts a rocky slope whence trickles, level with the ground, a streamlet, which forms a pond of some size. Here profound solitude reigns all day long. The ducklings will be well off; and the journey can be made in peace by a deserted footpath. You, little man, shall take them to that delectable spot. What a day it was that marked my first appearance as a herdsman of ducks! Why must there be a jar to the even tenor of such joys! The too-frequent encounter of my tender skin with the hard ground had given me a large and painful blister on the heel. Had I wanted to put on the shoes stowed away in the cupboard for Sundays and holidays, I could not. There was nothing for it but to go barefoot over the broken stones, dragging my leg and carrying high the injured heel. Let us make a start, hobbling along, switch in hand, behind the ducks. They, too, poor little things, have sensitive soles to their feet; they limp, they quack with fatigue. They would refuse to go any further if I did not, from time to time, call a halt under the shelter of an ash.