nded and sheltered by a
belt of trees. In the distance the peasants' houses were seen, the tall
clock spire of Aland, and far in the distance the chimneys of the furnace
belonging to M. de Vermondans. At this moment, the plain, the
snow-covered woods, the frozen lake presented one uniform color. Any one,
however, might see they would present beautiful landscapes, when the sun
called forth the field-flowers, made the forests lifeful, and gilded the
water.

Ireneus went to his uncle's room. He found the old man rested in an arm
chair, with his legs crossed and a long pipe in his mouth.

M. de Vermondans was not one of those persons who willingly distress
themselves about what the poets call the miseries of human life. He took
things as they came, and enjoyed prosperity without imagining future
troubles.

While young, he had fought with his brothers the battles of legitimacy.
Like his brother, he entertained a mortal hatred for revolutionary
rabble: gradually, like many others, he had begun to reason on the
matter, and become so tolerant that his doctrines reached the point
almost of carelessness. Just as her [sic] nephew came in, he was
reflecting and _quasi_ confirmed in the wisdom of his principles. "Yes,"
said he, as if he continued a conversation already begun, "yes, my
friend, I am as much opposed as you are to a stormy revolution. I left my
father's house, I abandoned my patrimony to accompany our princes into
exile. I have fought for them, in their holy cause I received a sabre cut
on the arm, which every now and then, by a very disagreeable sensation,
recalls my youthful patriotism to me. Soon, however, the idle pretensions
of my comrades, the disputes of our chiefs, repressed my ardor. I left
one of the cohorts in which reason was treated as treachery, and where
boasting alone was listened to with complacency. There firmness and
complaisance were paralyzed now by erroneous movements and next by
contradictory orders. A faithful servant contrived to save a portion of
my estate, and at the peril of his own life brought me twenty thousand
francs in gold. With this sum I came to Sweden, knowing that here
everything was cheap, and determined to buy a small estate on which I
might live, until I could find an opportunity of serving to some purpose
that cause to which my heart was devoted, and which I had never yet
entirely abandoned.

"At Stockholm one of those strange rencontres which we attribute to
chance, but wh