the sun at noon
Thus there is no need for me to describe them . All I can tell you is that the place has never been so attractive as it is now . On the day that I had the roof taken off , the sun for the first time brightened the damp walls within which my childhood was passed ; and the lizards to which I have left them are much better housed there than I once was . They can at least behold the light of day and warm their cold limbs in the rays of the sun at noon . There used to be an elder and a younger branch of the Mauprats . I belong to the elder . My grandfather was that old Tristan de Mauprat who ran through his fortune , dishonoured his name , and was such a blackguard that his memory is already surrounded by a halo of the marvelous .