it to admire, and, indeed, to
remember. They appealed to different men in me with equal force, I
did not then know why. A perplexing problem it was, and I had to
think and suffer much before I saw the end of it, and really came
to know what love is and what it is not.

[Illustration: "I could not for the life of me tell which of the
two charming girls I loved the better."]

Shortly I was near the end of this delightful season of illness. I
had been out of bed a week. The baroness had read to me every day,
and had been so kind that I felt a great shame for my part in our
deception. Every afternoon she was off in a boat or in her
caleche, and had promised to take me with her as soon as I was able
to go.

"You know," said she, "I am going to make you to stay here a full
month. I have the consent of the general."

I had begun to move about a little and enjoy the splendor of that
forest home. There were, indeed, many rare and priceless things in
it that came out of her chateau in France. She had some curious
old clocks, tokens of ancestral taste and friendship. There was
one her grandfather had got from the land of Louis XIV.--_Le Grand
Monarque_, of whom my mother had begun to tell me as soon as I
could hear with understanding. Another came from the bedchamber of
Philip II of Spain--a grand high clock that had tolled the hours in
that great hall beyond my door. A little thing, in a case of
carved ivory, that ticked on a table near my bed, Moliere had given
to one of her ancestors, and there were many others of equal
interest.

Her walls were adorned with art treasures of the value of which I
had little appreciation those days. But I remember there were
canvases of Correggio and Rembrandt and Sir Joshua Reynolds. She
was, indeed, a woman of fine taste, who had brought her best to
America; for no one had a doubt, in the time of which I am writing,
that the settlement of the Compagnie de New York would grow into a
great colony, with towns and cities and fine roadways, and the full
complement of high living. She had built the Hermitage,--that was
the name of the mansion,--fine and splendid as it was, for a mere
temporary shelter pending the arrival of those better days.

She had a curious fad, this hermit baroness of the big woods. She
loved nature and was a naturalist of no poor attainments. Wasps
and hornets were the special study of this remarkable woman. There
were at least a score of their nests