City of bright reflections and rolling hills, the soft lines of tilled slopes surround you like the twisted straw of a nest. The undulations of five or six ranges of wooded mountains in the distance are faintly blue like the sea, but it is not the perfidious element which overthrew Ulysses and his fleet. Here are no storms, no ambuscades; all is calm, save that here and there a breath seems to swell the breast of a hill. From the crest of one wave to the other, the roads run deliberately straight, leaving, as it were, a wake behind them, and beyond the edge of the waters, far away the spires of St. Marie Madeleine of Vézelay rise like masts. Close by, in a bend of the Yonne, you can see the rocks of Basseville sticking up through the underbrush like boars’ tusks, and in the center of the circle of hills the town, carelessly adorned, leans over the water with her gardens, her buildings, her rags, and her jewels. Here is filth; but here also is the harmony of her long limbs, and her head crowned with the pierced tower. You see the snail admires his shell. The chimes of the church float up from the valley and their pure voices spread like a crystal flood through the thin clear air. As I stand happily drinking in the music, suddenly a ray of sunshine breaks through the gray mantle which hides the sky, and Glodie claps her hands, crying: “Grandad, I hear him--the lark, the lark!” Her dear little fresh voice made me laugh as I kissed her and said: “I hear him too, my sweet little spring Lark!” II THE SIEGE OR THE LAMB, THE SHEPHERD, AND THE WOLF “Three lambs of Chamoux can put to flight Any wolf who comes in the night.”