I smile, sadly when I read in my journal, which I have just been looking over, these words repeated so often: "Never was there greater sorrow--" "Never was there more happiness--" "Never can I forget--" And now new joys have obliterated those sorrows; new troubles have faded those joys. Thus day after day, forgetfulness, that dark, cold tide, creeps up higher, higher, and swallows up in the black abyss of the past the souvenirs that time has discoloured. My mother! my father! Hélène! Marguerite! Catherine! you to whom I owe so much sorrow and so much felicity! Space or the tomb now separates you all from me; and I scarcely think of you at all! Perhaps, alas! it will be even so with the feelings and impressions that fill my mind at the present time. In spite of which I cannot help believing that they will last for ever. Ah, my father! my father! you told me a very dreadful, a very dangerous truth, when you affirmed that forgetfulness was the only reality of our lives. Thus, then, will I open this journal that I believed was closed for ever. I believed, too, that my heart was closed to all tender and happy impressions. But since I can still suffer, I will continue to write: Three months ago on a cloudy autumn morning I went out early. A cold, thick fog was falling. I followed the edge of the forest, and was walking dreamily along, while behind me came an old black pony, the venerable Black that my cousin Hélène used to ride so often in the old days. As I went along thus, with my head bowed towards the ground, I saw the newly made tracks of a great wild boar. Having lately been seeking to divert myself by violent exercise, I had brought thirty fox-hounds over from London, and begun to hunt in fairly good style, to the great delight of old Lefort, one of my father's "whippers-in," whom I had retained as head keeper. In following, out of curiosity, the trace of the boar, whose presence in the forest had been unknown up to this time, I left the edge of the woods and plunged deep into the undergrowth. After walking about three leagues I arrived at a little farm, called the _ferme des Prés_, which was situated on the confines of immense fields. Here I lost trace of the wild boar. This farm had recently been leased to a widow, named Madame Kerouët. My superintendent had spoken to me of the great activity of this woman, who came from the neighbourhood of Nantes, the death of her husband having caused her to quit the place that she helped him to farm in Brittany. I thought I would profit by the chance that had led me to the farm to make the acquaintance of my new tenant.