y heart. Ah! if you could
only see them in the month of June, when the foliage is at its fulness.
Flowers everywhere--yellow, blue, crimson! Music also everywhere--the
song of birds, the murmuring of waters, and the balmy scents in the air.
Then there are the lime-trees, the wild cherry, and the hedges red with
strawberries--it is intoxicating. And, whatever you may say, Monsieur de
Buxieres, I assure you that the beauty of the forest is not a thing to be
despised. Every season it is renewed: in autumn, when the wild fruits and
tinted leaves contribute their wealth of color; in winter, with its vast
carpets of snow, from which the tall ash springs to such a stately
height-look, now! up there!"

They were in the depths of the forest. Before them were colonnades of
slim, graceful trees, rising in one unbroken line toward the skies, their
slender branches forming a dark network overhead, and their lofty
proportions lessening in the distance, until lost in the solemn gloom
beyond. A religious silence prevailed, broken only by the occasional
chirp of the wren, or the soft pattering of some smaller fourfooted race.

"How beautiful!" exclaimed Reine, with animation; "one might imagine
one's self in a cathedral! Oh! how I love the forest; a feeling of awe
and devotion comes over me, and makes me want to kneel down and pray!"

Julien looked at her with an uneasy kind of admiration. She was walking
slowly now, grave and thoughtful, as if in church. Her white hood had
fallen on her shoulders, and her hair, slightly stirred by the wind,
floated like a dark aureole around her pale face. Her luminous eyes
gleamed between the double fringes of her eyelids, and her mobile
nostrils quivered with suppressed emotion. As she passed along, the
brambles from the wayside, intermixed with ivy, and other hardy plants,
caught on the hem of her dress and formed a verdant train, giving her the
appearance of the high-priestess of some mysterious temple of Nature. At
this moment, she identified herself so perfectly with her nickname,
"queen of the woods," that Julien, already powerfully affected by her
peculiar and striking style of beauty, began to experience a
superstitious dread of her influence. His Catholic scruples, or the
remembrance of certain pious lectures administered in his childhood,
rendered him distrustful, and he reproached himself for the interest he
took in the conversation of this seductive creature. He recalled the
legends of t