dry, a mass of stones, looking like a huge ditch cut
between the wooded mountains of Montegnac and another chain of parallel
hills beyond,--the latter being much steeper and without vegetation,
except for heath and juniper and a few sparse trees toward their summit.

These hills, desolate of aspect, belong to the neighboring domain and
are in the department of the Correze. A country road, following
the undulations of the valley, serves to mark the line between the
arrondissement of Montegnac and the two estates. This barren slope
supports, like a wall, a fine piece of woodland which stretches away
in the distance from its rocky summit. Its barrenness forms a complete
contrast to the other slope, on which is the cottage of Farrabesche.
On the one side, harsh, disfigured angularities, on the other,
graceful forms and curving outlines; there, the cold, dumb stillness of
unfruitful earth held up by horizontal blocks of stone and naked
rock, here, trees of various greens, now stripped for the most part of
foliage, but showing their fine straight many-colored trunks on every
slope and terrace of the land; their interlacing branches swaying to the
breeze. A few more persistent trees, oaks, elms, beeches, and chestnuts,
still retained their yellow, bronzed, or crimsoned foliage.

Toward Montegnac, where the valley widened immensely, the two slopes
form a horse-shoe; and from the spot where Veronique now stood leaning
against a tree she could see the descending valleys lying like the
gradations of an ampitheatre, the tree-tops rising from each tier like
persons in the audience. This fine landscape was then on the other side
of her park, though it afterwards formed part of it. On the side toward
the cottage near which she stood the valley narrows more and more until
it becomes a gorge, about a hundred feet wide.

The beauty of this view, over which Madame Graslin's eyes now roved
mechanically, recalled her presently to herself. She returned to the
cottage where the father and son were standing, silently awaiting her
and not seeking to explain her singular absence.

She examined the house, which was built with more care than its thatched
roof seemed to warrant. It had, no doubt, been abandoned ever since
the Navarreins ceased to care for this domain. No more hunts, no more
game-keepers. Though the house had been built for over a hundred years,
the walls were still good, notwithstanding the ivy and other sorts
of climbing-plants