, then, here are two that you would spare from the conflagration
of the forest.'

'Oh, if I could but see it on fire, what a fine effect it would have
from the windows of the chateau; I should think only of my two
favourite oaks that I should be so sorry to see burning.'

'But all those you see equally deserve to become favourites, and
those you cannot see are quite as fine; they have each in their
different forms something that would interest you as much as your two
favourite oaks, the poplar, or our lime-tree.'

'I do believe that if I were to think of every particular tree that
composed a forest, it would take away all wish to see it burned.'

'That shows the necessity of consideration, my son, to avoid the risk
of forming unreasonable wishes, to put them in practice, perhaps,
when you grow up. You will probably never have a forest to burn, but
you may have men to conduct: just think what might be the consequence
of your forgetting that a district, a town, a community, is composed
of individuals, as you just now forgot that a forest is composed of
trees.'

'Ah, papa, in such a case I could not forget myself.'

'I knew some years ago,' said Monsieur D'Ambly, 'a very good, but
rather obstinate man, of the name of De Marne. He had a quarrel with
the director of a hospital established in a small town on one of his
estates. The greater part of the property of the hospital was
situated on this estate, and dependent on it, as was then the
custom--that is to say, the hospital only held these lands on
condition of paying certain rents to Monsieur de Marne, and of
receiving two patients at his option. This right he held in
consequence of his ancestors having given these lands to the
hospital, and it descended to all the proprietors of the estate. The
director began to dispute with Monsieur de Marne about the payment of
the rent, and maintained that he bad no right to send more than one
patient to the hospital. Monsieur de Marne was exceedingly angry, and
a lawsuit was the consequence; and it so happened that the person
employed by Monsieur de Marne, in searching the papers which had been
sent to him to prove his right, discovered, or thought he had
discovered, that the ground which had occasioned the lawsuit belonged
to Monsieur de Marne, and not to the hospital, because, said he, the
ancestors of Monsieur de Marne only gave it for a certain time, and
on certain conditions which had not been fulfilled; so that Monsieur