nsation of coming
suddenly, when the eye is prepared for a barren landscape, upon a fresh
cool valley, watered by a river, with a little town sheltering beneath
a cliff like a swarm of bees in the hollow of an old willow? Wakened by
the "hu! hu!" of the postilion as he walks beside his horses, we shake
off sleep and admire, like a dream within a dream, the beautiful
scene which is to the traveler what a noble passage in a book is to a
reader,--a brilliant thought of Nature. Such is the sensation caused
by a first sight of Nemours as we approach it from Burgundy. We see it
encircled with bare rocks, gray, black, white, fantastic in shape like
those we find in the forest of Fontainebleau; from them spring scattered
trees, clearly defined against the sky, which give to this particular
rock formation the dilapidated look of a crumbling wall. Here ends the
long wooded hill which creeps from Nemours to Bouron, skirting the road.
At the bottom of this irregular amphitheater lie meadow-lands through
which flows the Loing, forming sheets of water with many falls. This
delightful landscape, which continues the whole way to Montargis, is
like an opera scene, for its effects really seem to have been studied.

One morning Doctor Minoret, who had been summoned into Burgundy by a
rich patient, was returning in all haste to Paris. Not having mentioned
at the last relay the route he intended to take, he was brought without
his knowledge through Nemours, and beheld once more, on waking from a
nap, the scenery in which his childhood had been passed. He had lately
lost many of his old friends. The votary of the Encyclopedists had
witnessed the conversion of La Harpe; he had buried Lebrun-Pindare and
Marie-Joseph de Chenier, and Morellet, and Madame Helvetius. He assisted
at the quasi-fall of Voltaire when assailed by Geoffroy, the continuator
of Freton. For some time past he had thought of retiring, and so, when
his post chaise stopped at the head of the Grand'Rue of Nemours, his
heart prompted him to inquire for his family. Minoret-Levrault, the post
master, came forward himself to see the doctor, who discovered him to
be the son of his eldest brother. The nephew presented the doctor to
his wife, the only daughter of the late Levrault-Cremiere, who had died
twelve years earlier, leaving him the post business and the finest inn
in Nemours.

"Well, nephew," said the doctor, "have I any other relatives?"

"My aunt Minoret, your sister, mar