Sealed Lips — page 165: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SEALED LIPS. : 157 days this place became uninhabitable. But the oak path at the end of the garden, with its healthy freshness, was reserved for promenades. ‘Twisted and knotty, but of medium height in spite of their centuries, these trees were as different from the giants of Fontainebleau as the thickset Bearnais to the erect and lofty Comtois. Full of sap, and — very vigorous, they formed, with their verdure which was opened to the sun, a cloister one hun- dred feet long. It was an exquisite, silent retreat, only disturbed by the noise of the black wood- peckers, who attack with their bills the cancerous, rough bark of the trees, which swarms with insects. There, even in the heavy, lukewarm days of July, the breeze never went to sleep. Sometimes it came heavily charged with the resinous odor of pines brought with heavy rumblings on certain days from Cape Brittany. Then it came again charged with the faint odor of hay which the pretty Basquaise, in her bare feet, spread on the other side of the stream. The place was not crossed by any road. One must understand it to be able to go there and follow the gray, clayey road which dead- ened the sound of every footstep. Carriages them- selves rolled over the ground without awaking the tranquil echo. Nevertheless, it is not a desert. Every hvuur a thick white smoke is seen over the tops of the wil- lows and poplars growing along the banks of the stream for at least half a league. This is the smoke GOmicboo CS, (E(0)