pleasing to look upon. It stood exactly in the
center of Rocreuse, where the highway made an elbow. The village had but
one street, with two rows of huts, a row on each side of the road; but
at the elbow meadows spread out, and huge trees which lined the banks of
the Morelle covered the extremity of the valley with lordly shade. There
was not, in all Lorraine, a corner of nature more adorable. To the right
and to the left thick woods, centenarian forests, towered up from gentle
slopes, filling the horizon with a sea of verdure, while toward the
south the plain stretched away, of marvelous fertility, displaying as
far as the eye could reach patches of ground divided by green hedges.
But what constituted the special charm of Rocreuse was the coolness
of that cut of verdure in the most sultry days of July and August. The
Morelle descended from the forests of Gagny and seemed to have gathered
the cold from the foliage beneath which it flowed for leagues; it
brought with it the murmuring sounds, the icy and concentrated shade
of the woods. And it was not the sole source of coolness: all sorts of
flowing streams gurgled through the forest; at each step springs bubbled
up; one felt, on following the narrow pathways, that there must exist
subterranean lakes which pierced through beneath the moss and availed
themselves of the smallest crevices at the feet of trees or between the
rocks to burst forth in crystalline fountains. The whispering voices of
these brooks were so numerous and so loud that they drowned the song of
the bullfinches. It was like some enchanted park with cascades falling
from every portion.

Below the meadows were damp. Gigantic chestnut trees cast dark shadows.
On the borders of the meadows long hedges of poplars exhibited in lines
their rustling branches. Two avenues of enormous plane trees stretched
across the fields toward the ancient Chateau de Gagny, then a mass
of ruins. In this constantly watered district the grass grew to an
extraordinary height. It resembled a garden between two wooded hills,
a natural garden, of which the meadows were the lawns, the giant trees
marking the colossal flower beds. When the sun's rays at noon poured
straight downward the shadows assumed a bluish tint; scorched grass
slept in the heat, while an icy shiver passed beneath the foliage.

And there it was that Pere Merlier's mill enlivened with its ticktack
a corner of wild verdure. The structure, built of plaster and planks,