deposited your
friend and correspondent.

On either side of this double pavilion grows a quick-set hedge, from
which the brambles straggle like stray locks of hair. Here and there a
tree shoots boldly up; flowers bloom on the slopes of the wayside ditch,
bathing their feet in its green and sluggish water. The hedge at both
ends meets and joins two strips of woodland, and the double meadow thus
inclosed is doubtless the result of a clearing.

These dusty and deserted lodges give entrance to a magnificent avenue of
centennial elms, whose umbrageous heads lean toward each other and form
a long and most majestic arbor. The grass grows in this avenue, and only
a few wheel-tracks can be seen along its double width of way. The great
age of the trees, the breadth of the avenue, the venerable construction
of the lodges, the brown tints of their stone courses, all bespeak an
approach to some half-regal residence.

Before reaching this enclosure from the height of an eminence such as we
Frenchmen rather conceitedly call a mountain, at the foot of which lies
the village of Conches (the last post-house), I had seen the long valley
of Aigues, at the farther end of which the mail road turns to follow a
straight line into the little sub-prefecture of La Ville-aux-Fayes, over
which, as you know, the nephew of our friend des Lupeaulx lords it. Tall
forests lying on the horizon, along vast slopes which skirt a river,
command this rich valley, which is framed in the far distance by the
mountains of a lesser Switzerland, called the Morvan. These forests
belong to Les Aigues, and to the Marquis de Ronquerolles and the Comte
de Soulanges, whose castles and parks and villages, seen in the distance
from these heights, give the scene a strong resemblance to the imaginary
landscapes of Velvet Breughel.

If these details do not remind you of all the castles in the air you
have desired to possess in France you are not worthy to receive the
present narrative of an astounded Parisian. At last I have seen a
landscape where art is blended with nature in such a way that neither
of them spoils the other; the art is natural, and the nature artistic.
I have found the oasis that you and I have dreamed of when reading
novels,--nature luxuriant and adorned, rolling lines that are not
confused, something wild withal, unkempt, mysterious, not common. Jump
that green railing and come on!

When I tried to look up the avenue, which the sun never penetrates
e