From a front view they looked like common yellow and black butterflies, but a side view showed them to be as glistening and as beautiful a blue as the exotic ones from Guinea that I had seen under glass in my uncle's museum.

They were very wary and difficult to ensnare, for they rested only for a second at a time upon the fragrant muscadel grapes before fluttering away over the wall.

Sometimes I would place my foot in a crevice of the stone wall, and scramble up to the top to look after them as they flew across the hot and silent fields; and often I remained there on the coping for a long time, propped upon my elbows, and contemplated the distant landscape.

Every where upon the horizon there were wooded mountains surrounded here and there by the ruins of feudal castles.

Before me, in the midst of fields of corn and buckwheat, was the Bories estate.