Sons of the Soil | Page 5

by a writing-
master. On either side of the railing is a ha-ha, the edges of which
bristle with angry spikes,--regular porcupines in metal. The railing is

closed at both ends by two porter's-lodges, like those of the palace at
Versailles, and the gateway is surmounted by colossal vases. The gold
of the arabesques is ruddy, for rust has added its tints, but this entrance,
called "the gate of the Avenue," which plainly shows the hand of the
Great Dauphin (to whom, indeed, Les Aigues owes it), seems to me
none the less beautiful for that. At the end of each ha-ha the walls of
the park, built of rough-hewn stone, begin. These stones, set in a mortar
made of reddish earth, display their variegated colors, the warm
yellows of the silex, the white of the lime carbonates, the russet browns
of the sandstone, in many a fantastic shape. As you first enter it, the
park is gloomy, the walls are hidden by creeping plants and by trees
that for fifty years have heard no sound of axe. One might think it a
virgin forest, made primeval again through some phenomenon granted
exclusively to forests. The trunks of the trees are swathed with lichen
which hangs from one to another. Mistletoe, with its viscid leaves,
droops from every fork of the branches where moisture settles. I have
found gigantic ivies, wild arabesques which flourish only at fifty
leagues from Paris, here where land does not cost enough to make one
sparing of it. The landscape on such free lines covers a great deal of
ground. Nothing is smoothed off; rakes are unknown, ruts and ditches
are full of water, frogs are tranquilly delivered of their tadpoles, the
woodland flowers bloom, and the heather is as beautiful as that I have
seen on your mantle- shelf in January in the elegant beau-pot sent by
Florine. This mystery is intoxicating, it inspires vague desires. The
forest odors, beloved of souls that are epicures of poesy, who delight in
the tiny mosses, the noxious fungi, the moist mould, the willows, the
balsams, the wild thyme, the green waters of a pond, the golden star of
the yellow water-lily,--the breath of all such vigorous propagations
came to my nostrils and filled me with a single thought; was it their
soul? I seemed to see a rose-tinted gown floating along the winding
alley.
The path ended abruptly in another copse, where birches and poplars
and all the quivering trees palpitated,--an intelligent family with
graceful branches and elegant bearing, the trees of a love as free! It was
from this point, my dear fellow, that I saw a pond covered with the
white water-lily and other plants with broad flat leaves and narrow

slender ones, on which lay a boat painted white and black, as light as a
nut-shell and dainty as the wherry of a Seine boatman. Beyond rose the
chateau, built in 1560, of fine red brick, with stone courses and copings,
and window-frames in which the sashes were of small leaded panes (O
Versailles!). The stone is hewn in diamond points, but hollowed, as in
the Ducal Palace at Venice on the facade toward the Bridge of Sighs.
There are no regular lines about the castle except in the centre building,
from which projects a stately portico with double flights of curving
steps, and round balusters slender at their base and broadening at the
middle. The main building is surrounded by clock-towers and sundry
modern turrets, with galleries and vases more or less Greek. No
harmony there, my dear Nathan! These heterogeneous erections are
wrapped, so to speak, by various evergreen trees whose branches shed
their brown needles upon the roofs, nourishing the lichen and giving
tone to the cracks and crevices where the eye delights to wander. Here
you see the Italian pine, the stone pine, with its red bark and its
majestic parasol; here a cedar two hundred years old, weeping willows,
a Norway spruce, and a beech which overtops them all; and there, in
front of the main tower, some very singular shrubs,--a yew trimmed in
a way that recalls some long-decayed garden of old France, and
magnolias with hortensias at their feet. In short, the place is the
Invalides of the heroes of horticulture, once the fashion and now
forgotten, like all other heroes.
A chimney, with curious copings, which was sending forth great
volumes of smoke, assured me that this delightful scene was not an
opera setting. A kitchen reveals human beings. Now imagine ME,
Blondet, who shiver as if in the polar regions at Saint-Cloud, in the
midst of this glowing Burgundian climate. The sun sends down its
warmest rays, the king-fisher watches on the shores of the pond, the
cricket chirps, the grain-pods burst, the poppy drops its