The Valley of Vision | Page 9

but restless father slid back into his old rounds
again. The forest waned and the debts waxed. Rumors of wild doings
came from Spa and Aix, from Homburg and Baden, from Trouville and
Ostend. After four years of this the young mother died, of no namable
disease, unless you call it heart-failure, and the boy was left to his
grandmother's care and company among the trees.
Every day when it was fair the old lady and the little lad took their
afternoon walk together in the beech-tree avenue, where the tips of the
branches now reached the road. At other times he roamed the outlying
woods and learned to know the birds and the little wild animals. When
he was twelve his grandmother died. After that he was left mainly to
the housekeeper, his tutors, and the few friends he could make among
the children of the neighborhood.
When he had finished his third year at the University of Louvain and
attained his majority, his father returned express-haste from somewhere
in Bohemia, to attend the coronation of Leopold II, that remarkable
King of Belgium and the Bourse. But by this time the gay Baron

d'Azan had become stout, the pillar of his neck seemed shorter because
it was thicker, and the rose in his bold cheek had the purplish tint of a
crimson rambler. So he died of an apoplexy during the festivities, and
his son brought him back to the Chateau d'Azan, and buried him there
with due honor, and mourned for him as was fitting. Thus Albert, third
Baron d'Azan, entered upon his inheritance.
It seemed, at first, to consist mainly of debts. These were paid by the
sale of the deforested lands and of certain detached woodlands. By the
same method, much as he disliked it, he made a modest provision of
money for continuing his education and beginning his travels. He knew
that he had much to learn of the world, and he was especially desirous
of pursuing his favorite study of botany, which a wise old priest at
Louvain had taught him to love. So he engaged an intelligent and
faithful forester to care for the trees and the estate, closed the house,
and set forth on his journeys.
They led him far and wide. In the course of them no doubt he studied
other things than botany. It may be that he sowed some of the wild oats
with which youth is endowed; but not in the gardens of others; nor with
that cold self-indulgence which transforms passionate impulse into
sensual habit. He had a permanent and regulative devotion to botanical
research; and that is a study which seems to promote modesty,
tranquillity, and steadiness of mind in its devotees, of whom the great
Linnaeus is the shining exemplar. Young Albert d'Azan sat at the feet
of the best masters in Europe and America. He crossed the western
continent to observe the oldest of living things, the giant Sequoias of
California. He went to Australasia and the Dutch East Indies and South
America in search of new ferns and orchids. He investigated the effect
of ocean currents and of tribal migrations in the distribution of trees.
His botanical monographs brought him renown among those who know,
and he was elected a corresponding member of many scientific
societies. After twenty years of voyaging he returned to port at Azan,
richly laden with observation and learning, and settled down among his
trees to pursue his studies and write his books.
The estate, under the forester's care, had improved a little and promised
a modest income. The house, though somewhat dilapidated, was easily
made livable. But the one thing that was full of glory and splendor,
triumphantly prosperous, was the great avenue of beeches. Their long,

low aisle of broad arches was complete. They shimmered with a pearly
mist of buds in early spring and later with luminous green of tender
leafage. In mid-summer they formed a wide, still stream of dark,
unruffled verdure; in autumn they were transmuted through glowing
yellow into russet gold; in winter their massy trunks were pillars of
gray marble and the fan-tracery of their rounded branches was
delicately etched against the sky.
"Look at them," the baron would say to the guests whom the fame of
his learning and the charm of his wide-ranging conversation often
brought to his house. "Those beeches were planted by my grandfather
after the battle of Wagram, when Napoleon whipped the Austrians.
After that came the Beresina and Leipsic and Waterloo and how many
battles and wars of furious, perishable men. Yet the trees live on
peaceably, they unfold their strength in beauty, they have not yet
reached the summit of their grandeur. We are all parvenus beside
them."
"If you had to choose," asked the great sculptor