ering ridges of pine-clad mountain-land, nestles the fashionable
little watering-place called Foretdechene. Two or three handsome
hotels; a bright white new pile of building, with vast windows of
shining plate-glass, and a stately quadrangular courtyard; a tiny
street, which looks as if a fragment of English Brighton had been
dropped into this Belgian valley; a stunted semi-classic temple, which
is at once a post-office and a shrine whereat invalids perform their
worship of Hygeia by the consumption of unspeakably disagreeable
mineral waters; a few tall white villas scattered here and there upon
the slopes of pine-clad hills; and a very uncomfortable
railway-station--constitute the chief features Foretdechene. But right
and left of that little cluster of shops and hotels there stretch deep
sombre avenues of oak, that look like sheltered ways to Paradise--and
the deep, deep blue of the August sky, and the pure breath of the warm
soft air, and the tender green of the young pine-woods that clothe the
sandy hills, and the delicious tranquillity that pervades the sleepy
little town and bathes the hot landscape in a languorous mist, are
charms that render Foretdechene a pleasant oasis amid the lurid woods
and mountains of the iron country.

Only at stated intervals the quiet of this sleepy hollow is broken by
the rolling of wheels, the jingling of bells, the cracking of whips,
the ejaculations of drivers, and supplications of touters: only when
the railroad carries away departing visitors, or brings fresh ones, is
there anything like riot or confusion in the little town under the
pine-clad hills--and even then the riot and confusion are of a very
mild order, and create but a transient discord amongst the harmonies of
nature.

And yet, despite the Arcadian tranquillity of the landscape, the drowsy
quiet of the pine-groves, the deep and solemn shade of those dark
avenues, where one might fondly hope to find some Druidess lingering
beneath the shelter of the oaks, there is excitement of no common order
to be found in the miniature watering-place of Foretdechene; and the
reflective and observant traveller, on a modern sentimental journey,
has only to enter the stately white building with the glittering
plate-glass windows in order to behold the master-passions or the human
breast unveiled for his pleasure and edification.

The ignorant traveller, impelled by curiosity, finds no bar to his
entrance. The doors are as wide open a