At the other end of the canal we see Blangy, the county-town,
containing about sixty houses, and the village church, which is nothing
more than a tumble-down building with a wooden clock-tower which
appears to hold up a roof of broken tiles. One comfortable house and the
parsonage are distinguishable; but the township is a large one,--about
two hundred scattered houses in all, those of the village forming as
it were the capital. The roads are lined with fruit-trees, and numerous
little gardens are strewn here and there,--true country gardens with
everything in them; flowers, onions, cabbages and grapevines, currants,
and a great deal of manure. The village has a primitive air; it is
rustic, and has that decorative simplicity which we artists are forever
seeking. In the far distance is the little town of Soulanges overhanging
a vast sheet of water, like the buildings on the lake of Thune.

When you stroll in the park, which has four gates, each superb in style,
you feel that our mythological Arcadias are flat and stale. Arcadia is
in Burgundy, not in Greece; Arcadia is at Les Aigues and nowhere else. A
river, made by scores of brooklets, crosses the park at its lower level
with a serpentine movement; giving a dewy freshness and tranquillity
to the scene,--an air of solitude, which reminds one of a convent of
Carthusians, and all the more because, on an artificial island in the
river, is a hermitage in ruins, the interior elegance of which is worthy
of the luxurious financier who constructed it. Les Aigues, my dear
Nathan, once belonged to that Bouret who spent two millions to receive
Louis XV. on a single occasion under his roof. How many ardent passions,
how many distinguished minds, how many fortunate circumstances have
contributed to make this beautiful place what it is! A mistress of Henri
IV. rebuilt the chateau where it now stands. The favorite of the Great
Dauphin, Mademoiselle Choin (to whom Les Aigues was given), added
a number of farms to it. Bouret furnished the house with all the
elegancies of Parisian homes for an Opera celebrity; and to him Les
Aigues owes the restoration of its ground floor in the style Louis XV.

I have often stood rapt in admiration at the beauty of the dining-room.
The eye is first attracted to the ceiling, painted in fresco in the
Italian manner, where lightsome arabesques are frolicking. Female forms,
in stucco ending in foliage, support at regular distances corbeils
of fruit, from wh