among the granite boulders is a church dedicated
to Saint-Sulpice, whose name is given to the suburb which lies across
the Nancon. This suburb, flung as it were to the bottom of a precipice,
and its church, the spire of which does not rise to the height of the
rocks which threaten to crush it, are picturesquely watered by several
affluents of the Nancon, shaded by trees and brightened by gardens. The
whole region of Fougeres, its suburbs, its churches, and the hills of
Saint-Sulpice are surrounded by the heights of Rille, which form part of
a general range of mountains enclosing the broad valley of Couesnon.

Such are the chief features of this landscape, the principal
characteristic of which is a rugged wildness softened by smiling
accidents, by a happy blending of the finest works of men's hands
with the capricious lay of a land full of unexpected contrasts, by a
something, hardly to be explained, which surprises, astonishes, and
puzzles. In no other part of France can the traveller meet with such
grandiose contrasts as those offered by the great basin of the Couesnon,
and the valleys hidden among the rocks of Fougeres and the heights of
Rille. Their beauty is of that unspeakable kind in which chance triumphs
and all the harmonies of Nature do their part. The clear, limpid,
flowing waters, the mountains clothed with the vigorous vegetation
of those regions, the sombre rocks, the graceful buildings, the
fortifications raised by nature, and the granite towers built by man;
combined with all the artifices of light and shade, with the contrasts
of the varieties of foliage, with the groups of houses where an active
population swarms, with the lonely barren places where the granite will
not suffer even the lichen to fasten on its surface, in short, with all
the ideas we ask a landscape to possess: grace and awfulness, poesy with
its renascent magic, sublime pictures, delightful ruralities,--all these
are here; it is Brittany in bloom.

The tower called the Papegaut, against which the house now occupied by
Mademoiselle de Verneuil rested, has its base at the very bottom of the
precipice, and rises to the esplanade which forms the cornice or terrace
before the church of Saint-Leonard. From Marie's house, which was open
on three sides, could be seen the horseshoe (which begins at the
tower itself), the winding valley of the Nancon, and the square of
Saint-Leonard. It is one of a group of wooden buildings standing
parallel wit