The Hunting Wasps 



a mouthful. At first they laugh at my sug- 

 gestion. I let them laugh and soon see them 

 all occupied, each more eagerly than his fel- 

 low, in plucking the precious sorrel. 



While chewing the bitter leaves, we come 

 to the beeches. These are first big, solitary 

 bushes, trailing on the ground; soon after, 

 dwarf trees, clustering close together; and, 

 finally, mighty trunks, forming a dense and 

 gloomy forest, whose soil is a mass of rough 

 limestone blocks. Bowed down in winter by 

 the weight of the snow, battered all the year 

 round by the fierce gusts of the mistral, many 

 of the trees have lost their branches and are 

 twisted into grotesque positions, or even lie 

 flat on the ground. An hour or more is 

 spent in crossing this wooded zone, which 

 from a distance shows against the sides of 

 the Ventoux like a black belt. Then once 

 more the beeches become bushy and scat- 

 tered. We have reached their upper bound- 

 ary and, to the great relief of all of us, 

 despite the sorrel-leaves, we have also 

 reached the stopping-place selected for our 

 lunch. 



We are at the source of the Grave, a 

 slender stream of water caught, as it bubbles 

 from the ground, in a series of long beech- 

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