his year, Gerard had prepared, in collusion with Grossetete, a surprise
for Madame Graslin's birthday. He had built a little hermitage on the
largest of the islands, rustic on the outside and elegantly arranged
within. The old banker took part in the conspiracy, in which
Farrabesche, Fresquin, Clousier's nephew, and nearly all the well-to-do
people in Montegnac co-operated. Grossetete sent down some beautiful
furniture. The clock tower, copied from that at Vevay, made a charming
effect in the landscape. Six boats, two for each pond, were secretly
built, painted, and rigged during the winter by Farrabesche and Guepin,
assisted by the carpenter of Montegnac.

When the day arrived (about the middle of May) after a breakfast
Madame Graslin gave to her friends, she was taken by them across the
park--which was finely laid out by Gerard, who, for the last five years,
had improved it like a landscape architect and naturalist--to the pretty
meadow of the valley of the Gabou, where, at the shore of the first
lake, two of the boats were floating. This meadow, watered by several
clear streamlets, lay at the foot of the fine ampitheatre where the
valley of the Gabou begins. The woods, cleared in a scientific manner,
so as to produce noble masses and vistas that were charming to the eye,
enclosed the meadow and gave it a solitude that was grateful to the
soul. Gerard had reproduced on an eminence that chalet in the valley of
Sion above the road to Brieg which travellers admire so much; here were
to be the dairy and the cow-sheds of the chateau. From its gallery the
eye roved over the landscape created by the engineer which the three
lakes made worthy of comparison with the beauties of Switzerland.

The day was beautiful. In the blue sky, not a cloud; on earth, all the
charming, graceful things the soil offers in the month of May. The trees
planted ten years earlier on the banks--weeping willows, osier, alder,
ash, the aspen of Holland, the poplars of Italy and Virginia, hawthorns
and roses, acacias, birches, all choice growths arranged as their nature
and the lay of the land made suitable--held amid their foliage a few
fleecy vapors, born of the waters, which rose like a slender smoke. The
surface of the lakelet, clear as a mirror and calm as the sky, reflected
the tall green masses of the forest, the tops of which, distinctly
defined in the limpid atmosphere, contrasted with the groves below
wrapped in their pretty veils. The lakes,