ight air--like thistledown. The
loneliness of these coverts is so excessive, that there are moments when
pleasure draws to the verge of fear. You listen and listen for some
noise to break the silence, till you grow half mesmerised by the
intensity of the strain; your sense of your own identity is troubled;
your brain reels, like that of some gymnosophist poring on his own nose
in Asiatic jungles; and should you see your own outspread feet, you see
them, not as anything of yours, but as a feature of the scene around
you.

Still the forest is always, but the stillness is not always unbroken.
You can hear the wind pass in the distance over the tree-tops; sometimes
briefly, like the noise of a train; sometimes with a long steady rush,
like the breaking of waves. And sometimes, close at hand, the branches
move, a moan goes through the thicket, and the wood thrills to its
heart. Perhaps you may hear a carriage on the road to Fontainebleau, a
bird gives a dry continual chirp, the dead leaves rustle underfoot, or
you may time your steps to the steady recurrent strokes of the woodman's
axe. From time to time, over the low grounds, a flight of rooks goes by;
and from time to time the cooing of wild doves falls upon the ear, not
sweet and rich and near at hand as in England, but a sort of voice of
the woods, thin and far away, as fits these solemn places. Or you hear
suddenly the hollow, eager, violent barking of dogs; scared deer flit
past you through the fringes of the wood; then a man or two running, in
green blouse, with gun and game-bag on a bandolier; and then, out of the
thick of the trees, comes the jar of rifle-shots. Or perhaps the hounds
are out, and horns are blown, and scarlet-coated huntsmen flash through
the clearings, and the solid noise of horses galloping passes below you,
where you sit perched among the rocks and heather. The boar is afoot,
and all over the forest, and in all neighbouring villages, there is a
vague excitement and a vague hope; for who knows whither the chase may
lead? and even to have seen a single piqueur, or spoken to a single
sportsman, is to be a man of consequence for the night.

Besides men who shoot and men who ride with the hounds, there are few
people in the forest, in the early spring, save woodcutters plying their
axes steadily, and old women and children gathering wood for the fire.
You may meet such a party coming home in the twilight: the old woman
laden with a fagot of chips, and