teen years later,
smitten with incurable remorse, she hanged herself on the very
branch of the very tree where they had strung up her noble lover;
and still walks round the pond at night, wringing her hands and
wailing. It's a sad story--let us hope it isn't true.

Barty Josselin evidently had this pond in his mind when he wrote in
"Ames en peine":

Sous la berge hantee
L'eau morne croupit--
Sous la sombre futaie
Le renard glapit,
Et le cerf-dix-cors brame, et les daims viennent boire a l'Etang du
Repit.
"Lachez-moi, Loupgaroux!"
Que sinistre est la mare
Quand tombe la nuit;
La chouette s'effare--
Le blaireau s'enfuit!
L'on y sent que les morts se reveillent--qu'une ombre sans nom vous
poursuit.
"Lachez-moi, Loup-garoux!"

Foret! foret! what a magic there is in that little French
dissyllable! Morne foret! Is it the lost "s," and the heavy "^" that
makes up for it, which lend such a mysterious and gloomy
fascination?

Forest! that sounds rather tame--almost cheerful! If _we_ want a
forest dream we have to go so far back for it, and dream of Robin
Hood and his merrie men! And even then Epping forces itself into our
dream--and even Chingford, where there was never a were-wolf within
the memory of man. Give us at least the _virgin_ forest, in some far
Guyana or Brazil--or even the forest primeval--

"... where the murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar"--

that we may dream of scalp-hunting Mingoes, and grizzly-bears, and
moose, and buffalo, and the beloved Bas-de-cuir with that magic
rifle of his, that so seldom missed its mark and never got out of
repair.

"Prom'nons nous dans les bois
Pendant que le loup n'y est pas...."

That's the first song I ever heard. Celine used to sing it, my
nurse--who was very lovely, though she had a cast in her eye and
wore a black cap, and cotton in her ears, and was pitted with the
smallpox. It was in Burgundy, which was rich in forests, with plenty
of wolves in them, and wild-boars too--and that was only a hundred
years ago, when that I was a little tiny boy. It's just an old
nursery rhyme to lull children to sleep with, or set them
dancing--pas aut' chose--but there's a deal of Old France in it!

There I go again--digressing as usual