Like Petit Trianon, Petit Val has little lakes with shady trees bordering them; it has grottos, waterfalls, winding paths, magnificent greenhouses, fountains, a _rivière_, pavilions, aviaries, terraces, _charmilles_, _berceaux_, _enfin tout!_ One feels like saying, "Mein Liebchen, was willst du mehr?" as the poet Heine says. The park is surrounded by a _saut de loup_ (a sunken wall about twenty feet high like "la Muette" in Paris). There is no need of putting up sign-boards with "No trespassing here" as no one could scale the walls of the _saut de loup_, so we feel very safe, especially when the five iron gates are locked. Beyond the park are the _chasse_, the farm, the vineyards, and the _potager_. We are so near Paris that we have many visitors. The drive out here is a pleasant one, going through Vincennes, Charenton, Alfort, etc., and one can get here in about an hour. Duke de Morny, the Duke de Persigny and the Rothschild family, Prince de Sagan, and different diplomats, not to speak of our numerous American friends who are thankful for a breath of fresh air, are frequent guests. The nearest chateau to us is Montalon, where Madame de Sévigné used to live, and from which she wrote some of her letters. If she ever wrote a tiresome one, it must surely have been from here, as the damp and moldy house, covered with creeping vines and overgrown with ivy, surrounded by melancholy cypress and poplar trees, which shut out the view, could scarcely have inspired her with brilliant ideas. Petit Val's _potager_ is known far and wide for the best peaches and pears in France, and the gardener takes all the prizes in the shows: if the prizes are in money, he pockets them; if they are diplomas, he allows us to keep them. He is a rare old scamp. When Mr. Moulton bought the place he had the right to call himself "De Petit Val," and he could have--if he had wished to--been "Moulton de Petit Val." But he turned up his American nose at such cheap nobility as this; still he was obliged, much against his will, to conform to the obligations which belonged to the estate. For instance, he had to give so many bushels of potatoes to the curé, so many bushels of grain to the doctor, so many bushels of vegetables to the postmaster, and to them all so many casks of the awful wine we produce on the estate, known in the vernacular as "_le petit bleu_."