walks shaded by
trees, for this is not a pleasure resort, but a true health resort;
one takes care of one's health as a business, and one gets well, so it
seems.

"Those who know affirm, even, that the mineral springs perform true
miracles here. However, no votive offering is hung around the cashier's
office.

"From time to time a gentleman or a lady comes over to a kiosk with a
slate roof, which shelters a woman of smiling and gentle aspect, and a
spring boiling in a basin of cement: Not a word is exchanged between
the invalid and the female custodian of the healing water. She hands the
newcomer a little glass in which air bubbles sparkle in the transparent
liquid. The guest drinks and goes off with a grave step to resume his
interrupted walk beneath the trees.

"No noise in the little park, no breath of air in the leaves; no voice
passes through this silence. One ought to write at the entrance to this
district: 'No one laughs here; they take care of their health.'

"The people who chat resemble mutes who merely open their mouths to
simulate sounds, so afraid are they that their voices might escape.

"In the hotel, the same silence. It is a big hotel, where you dine
solemnly with people of good position, who have nothing to say to each
other. Their manners bespeak good breeding, and their faces reflect the
conviction of a superiority of which it might be difficult for some to
give actual proofs.

"At two o'clock I made my way up to the Casino, a little wooden but
perched on a hillock, which one reaches by a goat path. But the view
from that height is admirable. Chatel-Guyon is situated in a very narrow
valley, exactly between the plain and the mountain. I perceive, at the
left, the first great billows of the mountains of Auvergne, covered with
woods, and here and there big gray patches, hard masses of lava, for
we are at the foot of the extinct volcanoes. At the right, through
the narrow cut of the valley, I discover a plain, infinite as the sea,
steeped in a bluish fog which lets one only dimly discern the villages,
the towns, the yellow fields of ripe grain, and the green squares of
meadowland shaded with apple trees. It is the Limagne, an immense level,
always enveloped in a light veil of vapor.

"The night has come. And now, after having dined alone, I write these
lines beside my open window. I hear, over there, in front of me, the
little orchestra of the Casino, which plays airs just as a foolish bird
mig