ence and of liberty!
On touching thee the soul swells within us, the mind expands; no child
of thine can return to thy bosom without a throb of holy joy, a feeling
of noble pride. I passed along filled with delirious happiness. The
trees smiled on me, the winds whispered softly in my ear, the little
flowers that carpeted the wayside welcomed me; it required an effort to
restrain myself from embracing as brothers the noble fellows that passed
me on the way.

Then, Edgar, I was to find you again, and it was the spot of my
birthplace, the paternal acres which in our common land seem to us a
second country.

The night was dark, no moon, no stars; I had just left Grenoble and was
passing through Voreppe, a little village not without some importance
because in the neighborhood of the Grande Chartreuse, which, at this
season of the year, attracts more curiosity-hunters than
believers--suddenly the horses stopped, I heard a rumbling noise
outside, and a crimson glare lighted up the carriage windows. I might
have taken it for sunset, if the sun had not set long since.

I got out and found the only inn of the village on fire; great was the
confusion in the small hamlet, there was a general screaming, struggling
and running about. The innkeeper with his wife, children, and servants
emptied the stables and barns. The horses neighed, the oxen bellowed,
and the pigs, feeling that they were predestined to be roasted anyhow,
offered to their rescuers an obstinate and philosophical resistance.

Meantime the notables of the place, formed in groups, discussed
magisterially the origin of a fire which no one made an effort to stay.
Left alone, it brightened the night, fired the surrounding hills and
shot its jets and rockets of sparks far into the sky. You, a poet, would
have thought it fine. Sublime egotist that you are, everything is
effect, color, mirages, decorations. Endeavoring to make myself useful
in this disaster, I thought I heard it whispered around me that some
travellers remained in the inn, who, if not already destroyed, were
seriously threatened.

Among others a young stranger was mentioned who had come that day from
the Grande Chartreuse, which she had been visiting. I went straight to
the innkeeper who was dragging one of his restive pigs by the tail,
reminding me of one of the most ridiculous pictures of Charlet. "All
right," said the man, "all the travellers are gone, and as to those who
remain--" "Then some do rema