a, from which the enchanted eye takes in each detail at its
leisure, or on an island in the bosom of which is a little house
concealed under the drooping foliage of a century-old ash, an island
fringed with irises, rose-bushes, and flowers which appears like an
emerald richly set. Ah! one might rove a thousand leagues for such a
place! The most sickly, the most soured, the most disgusted of our men
of genius in ill health would die of satiety at the end of fifteen
days, overwhelmed with the luscious sweetness of fresh life in such a
spot.

The man who was quite regardless of the Eden which he thus possessed
had neither wife nor children, but was attached to a large ape which
he kept. A graceful turret of wood, supported by a sculptured column,
served as a dwelling place for this vicious animal, who being kept
chained and rarely petted by his eccentric master, oftener at Paris
than in his country home, had gained a very bad reputation. I
recollect seeing him once in the presence of certain ladies show
almost as much insolence as if he had been a man. His master was
obliged to kill him, so mischievous did he gradually become.

One morning while I was sitting under a beautiful tulip tree in
flower, occupied in doing nothing but inhaling the lovely perfumes
which the tall poplars kept confined within the brilliant enclosure,
enjoying the silence of the groves, listening to the murmuring waters
and the rustling leaves, admiring the blue gaps outlined above my head
by clouds of pearly sheen and gold, wandering fancy free in dreams of
my future, I heard some lout or other, who had arrived the day before
from Paris, playing on a violin with the violence of a man who has
nothing else to do. I would not wish for my worst enemy to hear
anything so utterly in discord with the sublime harmony of nature. If
the distant notes of Roland's Horn had only filled the air with life,
perhaps--but a noisy fiddler like this, who undertakes to bring to you
the expression of human ideas and the phraseology of music! This
Amphion, who was walking up and down the dining-room, finished by
taking a seat on the window-sill, exactly in front of the monkey.
Perhaps he was looking for an audience. Suddenly I saw the animal
quietly descend from his little dungeon, stand upon his hind feet, bow
his head forward like a swimmer and fold his arms over his bosom like
Spartacus in chains, or Catiline listening to Cicero. The banker,
summoned by a sweet voice