midday
You know that he thinks of neither eating nor drinking when that takes possession of him ! '' Then all the young girl 's vexation was exhaled in a low plaint : `` Ah , my God ! my God ! '' And while Martine went to make up her room , she took an umbrella from the hall stand and went disconsolately to eat her roll in the garden , not knowing now how she should occupy her time until midday . It was now almost seventeen years since Dr. Pascal , having resolved to leave his little house in the new town , had bought La Souleiade for twenty thousand francs , in order to live there in seclusion , and also to give more space and more happiness to the little girl sent him by his brother Saccard from Paris . This Souleiade , situated outside the town gates on a plateau dominating the plain , was part of a large estate whose once vast grounds were reduced to less than two hectares in consequence of successive sales , without counting that the construction of the railroad had taken away the last arable fields . The house itself had been half destroyed by a conflagration and only one of the two buildings remained -- a quadrangular wing `` of four walls , '' as they say in Provence , with five front windows and roofed with large pink tiles .