‘In those good days when gentlemen left home, there were neither theatres nor concerts to amuse their poor neglected wives; they had no operas nor balls nor soirées nor promenades. No; their only resource was to work away at some huge piece of landscape embroidery, which, begun in childhood, occupied a whole life, and transmitted a considerable labour of background and foliage to the next generation. The only pleasant people in those times, it seems to me, were the _jongleurs_ and the pilgrims; they went about the world fulfilling the destinies of newspapers; they chronicled the little events of the day--births, marriages, deaths, etc.--and must have been a great comfort on a winter’s evening. ‘Well, it so chanced that as the countess sat at her window one evening, as usual, watching the sun go down, she beheld a palmer coming slowly along up the causeway, leaning on his staff, and seeming sorely tired and weary---- ‘But see,’ cried Laura, at this moment, as we gained the crest of a gentle acclivity, ‘yonder is Bouvigne; it is a fine thing even yet.’ We both reined in our horses, the better to enjoy the prospect; and certainly it was a grand one. Behind us, and stretching for miles in either direction, was the great forest we had been traversing; the old Ardennes had been a forest in the times of Caesar, its narrow pathways echoing to the tread of Roman legions. In front was a richly cultivated plain, undulating gently towards the Meuse, whose silver current wound round it like a garter--the opposite bank being formed by an abrupt wall of naked rocks of grey granite, sparkling with its brilliant hues, and shining doubly in the calm stream at its foot. On one of the highest cliffs, above an angle of the river, and commanding both reaches of the stream for a considerable way, stood Bouvigne. Two great square towers rising above a battlemented wall, pierced with long loopholes, stood out against the clear sky; one of them, taller than the other, was surmounted by a turret at the angle, from the top of which something projected laterally, like a beam. ‘Do you see that piece of timber yonder?’ said Laura. ‘Yes,’ said I; ‘it’s the very thing I’ve been looking at, and wondering what it could mean.’ ‘Carry your eye downward,’ said she, ‘and try if you can’t make out a low wall connecting two masses of rock together, far, far down: do you see it?’