To the Comtesse d'Agoult, better known by her _nom de plume_ of Daniel Stern, whose acquaintance she had recently made in Paris, she writes in May, 1836:-- I am still at La Chatre, staying with my friends, who spoil me like a child of five years old. I inhabit a suburb, built in terraces against the rock. At my feet lies a wonderfully pretty valley. A garden thirty feet square and full of roses, and a terrace extensive enough for you to walk along it in ten steps, are my drawing-room, my study, and gallery. My bed-room is rather large--it is decorated with a red cotton curtained bed--a real peasant's bed, hard and flat, two straw chairs, and a white wooden table. My window is situated six feet above the terrace. By the trellised trees on the wall I can get out and in, and stroll at night among my thirty feet of flowers without having to open a door or wake anyone. Sometimes I go out riding alone, at dusk. I come in towards midnight. My cloak, my rough hat, and the melancholy trot of my nag, make me pass in the darkness for a commercial traveller, or a farm-boy. One of my grand amusements is to watch the transition from night to day; it effects itself in a thousand different manners. This revolution, apparently so uniform, has every day a character of its own. The summer that had set in was unusually hot and sultry. Writing to Madame d'Agoult, July 10, 1836, she thus describes her enjoyment of a season that allowed of some of the pleasures of primitive existence:-- I start on foot at three in the morning, fully intending to be back by eight o'clock; but I lose myself in the lanes; I forget myself on the banks of the river; I run after butterflies; and I get home at midday in a state of torrefaction impossible to describe. Another time the sight of the cooling stream is more than she can resist, and she walks into the Indre fully dressed; but a few minutes more and the sun has dried her garments, and she proceeds on her walk of ten or twelve miles--"Never a cockchafer passes but I run after it." You have no idea of all the dreams I dream during my walks in the sun. I fancy myself in the golden days of Greece. In this happy country where I live you may often go for six miles without meeting a human creature. The flocks are left by themselves in pastures well enclosed by fine hedges; so the illusion can last for some time. One of my chief amusements when I have got out to some distance, where I don't know the paths, is to fancy I am wandering over some other country with which I discover some resemblance. I recollect having strolled in the Alps, and fancied myself for hours in America. Now I picture to myself an Arcadia in Berry. Not a meadow, not a cluster of trees which, under so fine a sun, does not appear to me quite Arcadian.