e who have not been
carried away by the fatal flood of misfortune from the paternal hearth,
who have always lived in sight of that home which sheltered their merry
childhood, and whose lives, pure and peaceful as the noiseless stream of
the valley, close in calmness and serenity like the twilight of a bright
summer's day.

CHAPTER II.

Le Morvan--Forests--Climate--Patriarchs and Damosels--Peasants of
the plain and the mountaineer--Jovial Cures--Their love of
Burgundy--The Doctor and the Cure.

Le Morvan, anciently Morvennium, or Pagus Morvinus, as Caesar calls it in
his Commentaries, comprises, as we have before remarked, a portion of
the departments of the Nievre and the Yonne, lying between vine-clad
Burgundy and the mountains of the Nivernois. Its productions are
various; in the plains are grown wheat, rye, hemp, oats, and flax: on
the mountain side the grape is largely cultivated; and in the valleys
are rich verdant meadows, where countless droves of oxen, knee-deep in
the luxuriant grass, feed and fatten in peace and abundance.

But the real and inexhaustible wealth of Le Morvan is in its forests. In
these several thousand trees are felled annually, sawn into logs,
branded and thrown by cart-loads into the neighbouring torrent, which,
on reaching a more tranquil stream, are lashed into rafts, when they
drift onwards to the Seine, and are eventually borne on the waters of
that river to the capital. The forests of the Nievre are some of the
most extensive in France; thick and dark, and formed of ancient oaks,
maple, and spreading beech, they cover nearly 200,000 acres of ground.
Those of the Yonne are larger but of a character far less wild.

The climate of this part of France is delightful; with the exception of
occasional showers, very little rain falls; the sky is serene, and
scarcely ever is a vagabond cloud seen in the ethereal blue to throw a
shadow upon the lovely landscape beneath. For six months of the year the
sun is daily refulgent in the heavens, and sets evening after evening in
all his glorious majesty. But in the woods it is not thus; the storms
there are sometimes terrible, and, like those of the tropics, arise and
terminate with wonderful rapidity. These tempests, which purify the
atmosphere, leave behind them a delicious coolness, the trees and
shrubs, as they shake from their trembling leaves their sparkling tears,
appear so bright--the flowers which raise again their dr