It was four o'clock. The Bois was awakening from the drowsiness of a warm afternoon. Clouds of dust flew along the Avenue de l'Impératrice, and one could see, spread out afar, the expanse of verdure which the slopes of Saint-Cloud and Suresnes, crowned by the grey walls of Mont Valérien, limited. High above the horizon the sun shed its rays, filling the recesses of the foliage with golden dust, lighting up the tall branches, and changing the ocean of leaves into an ocean of light. Past the fortifications, in the avenue of the Bois leading to the lake, the ground had just been watered; and the vehicles rolled over the brown soil as over a carpet, amid a rising freshness and an odour of damp earth. Mingled with the low bushes on either side, the little trees of the copses reared their crowd of young trunks, growing indistinct in the greenish dimness which flashes of light pierced here and there with yellow glades; and, by degrees, as one approached the lake, the chairs on the side-walks became more numerous, families sat, gazing with quiet silent faces at the interminable procession of wheels. Then, on reaching the open space in front of the lake, there was a dazzlement, the oblique sun transformed the round expanse of water into a huge mirror of polished silver reflecting the brilliant disk of the planet. All eyes blinked, one could only distinguish the dark form of the pleasure boat on the left hand side near the bank. The parasols in the vehicles were inclined with a gentle and uniform movement towards this splendour, and only rose erect again on reaching the roadway skirting the sheet of water, which, from the summit of the bank, now assumed a metallic blackness, streaked with golden burnishings. On the right hand side the clumps of fir trees lined the road with their colonnades of straight slender stems, the soft violet tinge of which was reddened by the flames of the sky; on the left the lawns, bathed in light and similar to fields of emeralds, stretched away as far as the distant lace-like ironwork of the gate of La Muette. And on approaching the cascade, while the dimness of the copses again presented itself on one side, the islands at the end of the lake rose up into the blue air, with the sunshine playing over their banks, and bold shadows darting from their pines, at the feet of which the chalet looked like some child's plaything lost in a corner of a virgin forest. The whole wood laughed and quivered in the sunshine.