Happiness, says Solomon, consists not in the possession of that gold for which men toil so unremittingly and grave deep wrinkles on the heart and brow. Happiness lights not her torch at the crystal lustres in the halls of royalty; she rarely chooses for her home the marble palaces of the wealthy, nor is she often the companion of the great, robed in costly apparel; rarely does she braid her hair with pearls, or wear the rosy lightning of the ruby on her fair bosom. Happiness is known only to him who, free and contented, lives unknown in his little corner, deaf to the turmoil and insensible to the excitements of the selfish crowd, and ignorant of the sorrows and sufferings of great cities. She is found in the enjoyment of the sunshine and the open air, in the shady groves and flowery fields, by the side of the murmuring brooks, and in the society of the gay, frank, and simple-minded peasant of my own dear country. Oh! my white and pretty _pavillon_, whose walls are clad with fragrant creepers and the luscious vine, whose porch is scented with the woodbine and the rose--oh! lovely valleys, dark forests, deep blue lakes which sleep unruffled in the bosom of the hills, beautiful vine-clad hills, where in the morning of my youth I chased those flying flowers, the bright and painted butterflies--oh! when, when shall I see you all again--like the bird of passage, which, when the winter is over, returns to his sunny home? When shall I see thee again? Oh! my sweet Le Morvan! Oh! my native land! Happy, thrice happy they who cherish in their hearts the love of nature, who prefer her sublime and incomparable beauties to the false and artificial works of man, accumulated with so much cost and care within the walls of her great cities. Happy, too, are those who have not been carried away by the fatal flood of misfortune from the paternal hearth, who have always lived in sight of that home which sheltered their merry childhood, and whose lives, pure and peaceful as the noiseless stream of the valley, close in calmness and serenity like the twilight of a bright summer's day. CHAPTER II. Le Morvan--Forests--Climate--Patriarchs and Damosels--Peasants of the plain and the mountaineer--Jovial Curés--Their love of Burgundy--The Doctor and the Curé. Le Morvan, anciently Morvennium, or Pagus Morvinus, as Cæsar calls it in his Commentaries, comprises, as we have before remarked, a portion of the departments of the Nièvre and the Yonne, lying between vine-clad Burgundy and the mountains of the Nivernois. Its productions are various; in the plains are grown wheat, rye, hemp, oats, and flax: on the mountain side the grape is largely cultivated; and in the valleys are rich verdant meadows, where countless droves of oxen, knee-deep in the luxuriant grass, feed and fatten in peace and abundance.