t feathered game
in that part of France was to be found. Eagles were shot there
occasionally, and birds of passage, such as rarely venture into our
over-populated part of the country, invariably lighted amid these giant
oaks, as if they knew or recognized some little corner of a primeval
forest which had remained there to serve them as a shelter during their
short nocturnal halt.

In the valley there were large meadows watered by trenches and
separated by hedges; then, further on, the river, which up to that
point had been kept between banks, expanded into a vast marsh. That
marsh was the best shooting ground I ever saw. It was my cousin's chief
care, and he kept it as a preserve. Through the rushes that covered it,
and made it rustling and rough, narrow passages had been cut, through
which the flat-bottomed boats, impelled and steered by poles, passed
along silently over dead water, brushing up against the reeds and
making the swift fish take refuge in the weeds, and the wild fowl, with
their pointed, black heads, dive suddenly.

I am passionately fond of the water: of the sea, though it is too vast,
too full of movement, impossi-ble to hold; of the rivers which are so
beautiful, but which pass on, and flee away and above all of the
marshes, where the whole unknown existence of aquatic animals
palpitates. The marsh is an entire world in itself on the world of
earth--a different world, which has its own life, its settled
inhabitants and its passing travelers, its voices, its noises, and
above all its mystery. Nothing is more impressive, nothing more
disquieting, more terrifying occasionally, than a fen. Why should a
vague terror hang over these low plains covered with water? Is it the
low rustling of the rushes, the strange will-o'-the-wisp lights, the
silence which prevails on calm nights, the still mists which hang over
the surface like a shroud; or is it the almost inaudible splashing, so
slight and so gentle, yet sometimes more terrifying than the cannons of
men or the thunders of the skies, which make these marshes resemble
countries one has dreamed of, terrible countries holding an unknown and
dangerous secret?

No, something else belongs to it--another mystery, profounder and
graver, floats amid these thick mists, perhaps the mystery of the
creation itself! For was it not in stagnant and muddy water, amid the
heavy humidity of moist land under the heat of the sun, that the first
germ of life pulsated and expa