Sons of the Soil | Page 4

letter in the morning, let your mind
travel, as you lie in bed, fifty leagues or thereabouts from Paris, along

the great mail road which leads to the confines of Burgundy, and
behold two small lodges built of red brick, joined, or separated, by a
rail painted green. It was there that the diligence 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
except when it rises or when it sets, striping the road like a zebra with
its oblique rays, my view was obstructed by an outline of rising ground;
after that is passed, the long avenue is obstructed by a copse, within
which the roads meet at a cross-ways, in the centre of which stands a
stone obelisk, for all the world like an eternal exclamation mark. From
the crevices between the foundation stones of this erection, which is
topped by a spiked ball (what an idea!), hang flowering plants, blue or
yellow according to the season. Les Aigues must certainly have been
built by a woman, or for a woman; no man would have had such dainty
ideas; the architect no doubt had his cue.
Passing through the little wood placed there as sentinel, I came upon a
charming declivity, at the foot of which foamed and gurgled a little
brook, which I crossed on a culvert of mossy stones, superb in color,
the prettiest of all the mosaics which time manufactures. The avenue
continues by the brookside up a gentle rise. In the distance, the first
tableau is now seen,--a mill and its dam, a causeway and trees, linen
laid out to dry, the thatched cottage of the miller, his fishing-nets, and
the tank where the fish are kept,--not to speak of the miller's boy, who
was already watching me. No matter where you are in the country,
however solitary you may think yourself, you are certain to be the focus
of the two eyes of a country bumpkin; a laborer rests on his hoe, a
vine-dresser straightens his bent back, a little goat-girl, or shepherdess,
or milkmaid climbs a willow to stare at you.
Presently the avenue merges into an alley of acacias, which leads to an
iron railing made in the days when iron-workers fashioned those
slender filagrees which are not unlike the copies set us