"Ah, just so!" said the little apoplectic gentleman leaning across his wife to me: "_Monsieur est Anglais! c'est tres bien, c'est tres bien!_ Monsieur, you do us great honour to come to visit this savage wilderness. But _voyez-vous_, you would have done much better to have stopped at Paris; there's nothing here, sir--absolutely nothing! What are these mountains? Bare rocks! forests, indeed, there are; but there are forests every where. Give me, sir, the Foret de Montmorency, even the Bois de Boulogne; and for rocks, I wish for nothing better than the Rocher de Cancale." (Here he rubbed his hands excessively, and looked round the table for a smile at the _bon-mot_.) "M. Bouton will pardon me," observed the old officer, "but if he had travelled all over Europe as I have done, he would not wonder at the desire to change an every-day scene for something new. When our _corps d'armee_ was traversing the Mont St Bernard, I assure you I never felt the slightest regret at having quitted Paris:--we could have gone on to the end of the world with the spirits we then were in. It was the same in the Pyrenees:--for more reasons than one I was extremely sorry when we had to quit Pampeluna for Bayonne"--and the old gentleman sighed, and looked wistfully up at the ceiling, as though many a painful recollection came across his mind at that moment. "Which are the finer mountains sir," was my inquiry--"the Pyrenees or these of Auvergne?" "You can hardly draw a comparison between them," he replied. "There is vast extent, width, and height in the Pyrenees, and a certain degree of savage horror about them, which you do not feel even amidst the Alps:--they partake of the nature both of France and Spain:--they are unlike any mountains I know of. But for all this, sir, do not allow yourself to hold a poor opinion of these heights of Mont Dor: you will find here scope and exercise for all your enthusiasm, all your love of the picturesque. Are you fond of shooting and hunting?--well, then, if you were to remain here during September and October, braving the early snows which come upon these mountains even in autumn, you would have your choice of all animals from the wolf to the _chevreuil_ and the hare, and of all birds from the eagle to the partridge. There are plenty of snipes on these hills."