find the sources of the Avonne, which the general and
the countess daily extolled in the evening, making plans to visit them
which were daily forgotten the next morning. Above Les Aigues the Avonne
really had the appearance of an alpine torrent. Sometimes it hollowed
a bed among the rocks, sometimes it went underground; on this side the
brooks came down in cascades, there they flowed like the Loire on sandy
shallows where rafts could not pass on account of the shifting channels.
Blondet took a short cut through the labyrinths of the park to reach the
gate of Conches. This gate demands a few words, which give, moreover,
certain historical details about the property.

The original founder of Les Aigues was a younger son of the Soulanges
family, enriched by marriage, whose chief ambition was to make his
elder brother jealous,--a sentiment, by the bye, to which we owe the
fairy-land of Isola Bella in the Lago Maggiore. In the middle ages
the castle of Les Aigues stood on the banks of the Avonne. Of this old
building nothing remains but the gateway, which has a porch like the
entrance to a fortified town, flanked by two round towers with conical
roofs. Above the arch of the porch are heavy stone courses, now draped
with vegetation, showing three large windows with cross-bar sashes.
A winding stairway in one of the towers leads to two chambers, and a
kitchen occupies the other tower. The roof of the porch, of pointed
shape like all old timber-work, is noticeable for two weathercocks
perched at each end of a ridge-pole ornamented with fantastic iron-work.
Many an important place cannot boast of so fine a town hall. On the
outside of this gateway, the keystone of the arch still bears the arms
of Soulanges, preserved by the hardness of the stone on which the chisel
of the artist carved them, as follows: Azure, on a pale, argent, three
pilgrim's staff's sable; a fess bronchant, gules, charged with four
grosses patee, fitched, or; with the heraldic form of a shield awarded
to younger sons. Blondet deciphered the motto, "Je soule agir,"--one of
those puns that crusaders delighted to make upon their names, and which
brings to mind a fine political maxim, which, as we shall see later, was
unfortunately forgotten by Montcornet. The gate, which was opened for
Blondet by a very pretty girl, was of time-worn wood clamped with iron.
The keeper, wakened by the creaking of the hinges, put his nose out of
the window and showed himself in his