tside the village. The
river, as blue as heaven, shone here and there among the foliage. The
indefatigable birds turned and flickered about Gretz church tower. A
healthy wind blew from over the forest, and the sound of innumerable
thousands of tree-tops and innumerable millions on millions of green
leaves was abroad in the air, and filled the ear with something between
whispered speech and singing. It seemed as if every blade of grass must
hide a cigale; and the fields rang merrily with their music, jingling far
and near as with the sleigh-bells of the fairy queen. From their station
on the slope the eye embraced a large space of poplar'd plain upon the
one hand, the waving hill-tops of the forest on the other, and Gretz
itself in the middle, a handful of roofs. Under the bestriding arch of
the blue heavens, the place seemed dwindled to a toy. It seemed
incredible that people dwelt, and could find room to turn or air to
breathe, in such a corner of the world. The thought came home to the
boy, perhaps for the first time, and he gave it words.

'How small it looks!' he sighed.

'Ay,' replied the Doctor, 'small enough now. Yet it was once a walled
city; thriving, full of furred burgesses and men in armour, humming with
affairs;--with tall spires, for aught that I know, and portly towers
along the battlements. A thousand chimneys ceased smoking at the curfew
bell. There were gibbets at the gate as thick as scarecrows. In time of
war, the assault swarmed against it with ladders, the arrows fell like
leaves, the defenders sallied hotly over the drawbridge, each side
uttered its cry as they plied their weapons. Do you know that the walls
extended as far as the Commanderie? Tradition so reports. Alas, what a
long way off is all this confusion--nothing left of it but my quiet words
spoken in your ear--and the town itself shrunk to the hamlet underneath
us! By-and-by came the English wars--you shall hear more of the English,
a stupid people, who sometimes blundered into good--and Gretz was taken,
sacked, and burned. It is the history of many towns; but Gretz never
rose again; it was never rebuilt; its ruins were a quarry to serve the
growth of rivals; and the stones of Gretz are now erect along the streets
of Nemours. It gratifies me that our old house was the first to rise
after the calamity; when the town had come to an end, it inaugurated the
hamlet.'

'I, too, am glad of that,' said Jean-Marie.

'It shou