d roofs and weather-cocks, and surrounded by domes,
belvederes, and old-fashioned dovecots, give it at a distance the
appearance of some oriental building. The weather-cocks in particular
are of the most fanciful and grotesque designs, and it is said, and I
should think there can be no doubt of the fact, that in no other
structure have so many been seen together: it is calculated there are no
less than three hundred. In going and returning from the forest, many a
time have I and my friends, in the hey-day of youthful iniquities,
knocked one of them off with a ball from our guns, to the great anger
of the proprietor, who threatened us with his mahogany crutch from the
hall door.

In the great ponds of Marot, and in the lakes of Lomervo--immense liquid
plains, deep and surrounded in their whole circumference by a forest of
green rushes, water-lilies, flags, and many other aquatic plants,
forming a wall of verdure--the enormous quantity of fish of every kind
is almost incredible. Nor is this extraordinary, for the waters of at
least a dozen streams from the mountains, which swarm with life, fall
into these vast reservoirs, and they are only fished once in every five
years. This is a delectable spot for fishermen; but, on the other hand,
as the value of these sheets of water is well understood by their
proprietors, they are sharply looked after by them and their keepers,
and it is almost as difficult to find an opportunity of throwing a line
during the day, as it is for a poacher to throw a casting net on a
moonlight night.

Nevertheless, as the appropriation of other people's property has an
exquisite charm for some temperaments,--as a stolen apple to a child's
palate is much more delightful than one that is not--the demon of
acquisitiveness is always leaning over a man's shoulder,--that is to
say, a poacher's shoulder, or even that of a gentleman with poaching
tastes and inclinations,--to breathe in his ear bad advice. As to the
peasants in the neighbourhood, they are always consulting together, or
inventing some method by which they may circumvent the proprietors and
appropriate their fish to themselves.

One of the happiest discoveries of the kind I ever heard of,--not the
most recent but the best,--is the following. Every person in the
possession of a cottage, possesses also a few ducks and geese, which
paddle about their humble habitations. A man who has an itching for the
thing, and who desires to become a pond-sk