Her speech was lazy, soft, guttural, but pleasant nevertheless. It was the accent of the Monegascans whose syntax Mia followed. After having seen the young girl gather roses, François des Ygrées began to take notice of her and was much amused by her syntax for whose rules he enjoyed making research... First of all, he noticed the italianisms in her vocabulary, and especially the habit of conjugating the verb "to be" with the wrong auxiliary. For example, Mia would say: "_Je suis étée_," instead of "_J'ai été._" He also noted her bizarre way of repeating the verb in her principal clause: "I was at the Moulins, while you went to Menton, I was;" or better: "This year I am going to the gingerbread fair at Nice, I am." One time before sunrise, François des Ygrées went down to the garden. He abandoned himself to sweet reveries, during which he caught cold. All of a sudden he began to sneeze about twenty times in succession. Sneezing aroused him. He saw that the sky had whitened and the horizon cleared with the first light of dawn. Then the first shafts of sunlight enflamed the sky along the Italian coast. Before him spread the still sorrowful sea, and on the horizon, like little clouds above the film of sea, could be seen the curving peaks of Corsica, which always disappeared after the rising of the sun. The baron des Ygrées shivered, then he yawned and stretched himself. He kept on regarding the sea to the east where one might have said there glittered a royal navy in sight of a seaport with white houses, Bodighère, which furnished palms for the festivities of the Vatican. He turned toward the immobile guardian of the garden, a great cypress, begirt with a full-blown rose bush which clambered up almost to its top. François des Ygrées breathed of the sumptuous roses of nonpareil fragrance whose petals, as yet closed, were of flesh. And just then Mia called him to have his breakfast. With her braid hanging down her back, she had just come to pick some figs and she was letting a few creamy drops flow into a pitcher of milk. She smiled at François des Ygrées, saying: "Have you slept well?" "No, there are too many mosquitoes." "Don't you know that when you are stung you should rub the place with lemon and in order not to be stung by them you should put vaseline on your face before going to sleep. They never bite me." "That would be too bad. For you are very pretty, and ought to be told so oftener." "There are those who tell me so and others who think so without telling. Those who tell it to me make me neither hot nor cold, as for the others, so much the worse for them..." And François des Ygrées conceived at once a little fable for the timid: FABLE OF THE OYSTER AND THE HERRING An oyster dwelt, beautiful and wise, on a rock. She never dreamed of love but during fine weather simply bayed beatifically at the sun. A herring saw her and it was as a spark of powder. He tumbled hopelessly in love with her without daring to avow it.