The forests that at the present day cover such a considerable portion of the department of Eure, and which supply the great manufacturing cities on the Seine with fuel, were of much greater extent in the eighteenth century. The fragments of forest which now extend from Montfort to Breteuil were then united, and stretched in one almost unbroken green zone from the Seine to the Arve, following the course of the little river Rille. A spur struck off at Serquigny, and traced the confluent Charentonne upwards as far as Broglie. The little town of Bernay is no longer hemmed in by woods. The heights and the valley of the Charentonne are still well timbered, and green with copse and grove; the landscape is park-like; here and there a fine old oak with rugged bark and expanded arms proclaims itself a relic of the _ancien régime_; but the upstart poplars whitening in the wind along the river course spire above these venerable trees. The roads lie between wheat and potato fields, and the names of hamlets, such as Bosc, Le Taillis, Le Buisson, Bocage, La Couture, &c., alone proclaim that once they lay embedded in forest foliage. On the eve of the Great French Revolution, Bernay was a manufacturing town, that had gradually sprung up during the middle ages, around the walls of the great Benedictine Abbey which the Duchess Judith of Brittany had founded in 1013, and endowed with nearly all the surrounding forest. The town was unhealthy. It lay in a hollow, and the monks had dammed up the little stream Cogney, which there met the Charentonne, to turn their mill wheel, and had converted a portion of the valley into a marsh, in which the frogs croaked loudly and incessantly. When the abbot was resident, the townsfolk were required to beat the rushes and silence the noisy reptiles every summer night; but now that the Superior resided at Dax, this requirement was not pressed. After a heavy downfall of rain, the rivulet was wanting to swell into a torrent, overflow the dam, and flood the streets of Bernay, carrying with it such an amount of peat that every house into which the water penetrated was left, after its retreat, plastered with black soil, and, in spring, smeared with frog-spawn. The mill was privileged. No other was permitted in the neighborhood. When M. Chauvin erected a windmill on the hill of Bouffey, the monks brought an action against him, and made him dismantle it. All the corn that grew within five miles was ground at the Abbey mill, and every tenth bag was taken by the Fathers in payment for grinding the corn indifferently and at their leisure. At certain seasons, more wheat was brought to the mill than the mill could grind, because the water had run short, or the stones were out of repair, consequently many thousands of hungry people had to wait in patience till the Cogney filled, or till the mill-stones had been re-picked, whilst the gutted windmill of M. Chauvin stood in compulsory inaction.