were greater and happier in these days than in those of Henri IV., Louis
XIV., and Louis XVI., monarchs who have all left the stamp of their
reigns upon Les Aigues. What palace, what royal castle, what mansions,
what noble works of art, what gold brocaded stuffs are sacred now?
The petticoats of our grandmothers go to cover the chairs in these
degenerate days. Selfish and thieving interlopers that we are, we pull
down everything and plant cabbages where marvels once were rife. Only
yesterday the plough levelled Persan, that magnificent domain which
gave a title to one of the most opulent families of the old parliament;
hammers have demolished Montmorency, which cost an Italian follower
of Napoleon untold sums; Val, the creation of Regnault de Saint-Jean
d'Angely, Cassan, built by a mistress of the Prince de Conti; in all,
four royal houses have disappeared in the valley of the Oise alone. We
are getting a Roman campagna around Paris in advance of the days when a
tempest shall blow from the north and overturn our plaster palaces and
our pasteboard decorations.

Now see, my dear fellow, to what the habit of bombasticising in
newspapers brings you to. Here am I writing a downright article. Does
the mind have its ruts, like a road? I stop; for I rob the mail, and I
rob myself, and you may be yawning--to be continued in our next; I hear
the second bell, which summons me to one of those abundant breakfasts
the fashion of which has long passed away, in the dining-rooms of Paris,
be it understood.

Here's the history of my Arcadia. In 1815, there died at Les Aigues one
of the famous wantons of the last century,--a singer, forgotten of
the guillotine and the nobility, after preying upon exchequers, upon
literature, upon aristocracy, and all but reaching the scaffold;
forgotten, like so many fascinating old women who expiate their
golden youth in country solitudes, and replace their lost loves by
another,--man by Nature. Such women live with the flowers, with the
woodland scents, with the sky, with the sunshine, with all that sings
and skips and shines and sprouts,--the birds, the squirrels, the
flowers, the grass; they know nothing about these things, they cannot
explain them, but they love them; they love them so well that they
forget dukes, marshals, rivalries, financiers, follies, luxuries, their
paste jewels and their real diamonds, their heeled slippers and their
rouge,--all, for the sweetness of country life.

I have g