As we neared the château, the Walloon remembered a number of apologies with which the count charged him to account for his not having gone himself to fetch me, alleging the claims of his other guests, and the unavoidable details which the forthcoming _ouverture de la chasse_ demanded at his hands. I paid little attention to the mumbled and broken narrative, interrupted by imprecations on the road and exhortations to the horses; for already we had entered the precincts of the demesne, and I was busy in noting down the appearance of the place. There was, however, little to remark. The transition from the wide forest to the park was only marked by a little improvement in the road; there was neither lodge nor gate--no wall, no fence, no inclosure of any kind. The trim culture, which in our country is so observable around the approach of a house of some consequence, was here totally wanting; the avenue was partly of gravel, partly of smooth turf; the brushwood of prickly holly was let grow wild, and straggled in many places across the road; the occasional views that opened seemed to have been made by accident, not design; and all was rank vegetation and rich verdure, uncared for-- uncultivated, but like the children of the poor, seeming only the healthier and more robust, because left to their own unchecked, untutored impulses. The rabbits played about within a few paces of the carriage tracks; the birds sat motionless on the trees as we passed, while here and there through the foliage I could detect the gorgeous colouring of some bright peacock’s tail, as he rested on a bough and held converse with his wilder brethren of the air, just as if the remoteness of the spot and its seclusions led to intimacies which in the ordinary routine of life had been impossible. At length the trees receded farther and farther from the road, and a beautiful expanse of waving lawn, dotted with sheep, stretched before the eye. In the distance, too, I could perceive the château itself--a massive pile in the shape of a letter L, bristling with chimneys, and pierced with windows of every size and shape; clumps of flowering shrubs and fruit- trees were planted about, and little beds of flowers spangled the even turf like stars in the expanse of heaven. The Meuse wound round the château on three sides, and perhaps thus saved it from being inflicted by a ditch, for without water a Dutchman can no more exist than a mackerel. ‘Fine! isn’t it?’ said the Walloon, as he pointed with his finger to the scene before me, and seemed to revel with delight in my look of astonishment, while he plied his whip with renewed vigour, and soon drew up at a wide flight of stone steps, where a row of orange-trees mounted guard on each side, and filled the place with their fragrance.