, the crooked viper slumbers, the moss
clings in the crevice; and above it all the great beech goes spiring and
casting forth her arms, and, with a grace beyond church architecture,
canopies this rugged chaos. Meanwhile, dividing the two cantons, the
broad white causeway of the Paris road runs in an avenue; a road
conceived for pageantry and for triumphal marches, an avenue for an
army; but, its days of glory over, it now lies grilling in the sun
between cool groves, and only at intervals the vehicle of the cruising
tourist is seen far away and faintly audible along its ample sweep. A
little upon one side, and you find a district of sand and birch and
boulder; a little upon the other lies the valley of Apremont, all
juniper and heather; and close beyond that you may walk into a zone of
pine trees. So artfully are the ingredients mingled. Nor must it be
forgotten that, in all this part, you come continually forth upon a
hill-top, and behold the plain, northward and westward, like an
unrefulgent sea; nor that all day long the shadows keep changing; and at
last, to the red fires of sunset, night succeeds, and with the night a
new forest, full of whisper, gloom, and fragrance. There are few things
more renovating than to leave Paris, the lamplit arches of the
Carrousel, and the long alignment of the glittering streets, and to
bathe the senses in this fragrant darkness of the wood.

In this continual variety the mind is kept vividly alive. It is a
changeful place to paint, a stirring place to live in. As fast as your
foot carries you, you pass from scene to scene, each vigorously painted
in the colours of the sun, each endeared by that hereditary spell of
forests on the mind of man, who still remembers and salutes the ancient
refuge of his race.

And yet the forest has been civilised throughout. The most savage
corners bear a name, and have been cherished like antiquities; in the
most remote, Nature has prepared and balanced her effects as if with
conscious art; and man, with his guiding arrows of blue paint, has
countersigned the picture. After your farthest wandering, you are never
surprised to come forth upon the vast avenue of highway, to strike the
centre point of branching alleys, or to find the aqueduct trailing,
thousand-footed, through the brush. It is not a wilderness; it is rather
a preserve. And, fitly enough, the centre of the maze is not a hermit's
cavern. In the midst, a little mirthful town lies sunlit, humm