Fruit-trees covered the wall facing south. The inclosure, encircled by a hedge of beech, was half orchard, half pleasure garden, and covered an area of three thousand metres. In front of the house was a square lawn, divided by a path from the gate to the front door. Leafy copses of plantain, chestnuts, American oaks, and birches, offered delightful retreats on either side of the house for reading or dreaming. As we went round the grounds, my father explained with animation the improvements which he projected. Here was to be a clump of rhododendrons, here a bed of Orleans roses, there a grove of lilacs. He consulted me with a feverish "Hey?" He was excited, unreserved; rarely had I seen him in such high spirits. Since the death of my mother his beautiful, sonorous, and contagious laugh had been heard no more. Chattering thus, we came to a mound at the bottom of the garden, from which we could see a corner of the village; the spire emerging from a screen of limes, the crossed sails of a silent mill perched on a grassy knoll, farms scattered among cornfields and meadows, until the plain was lost in the horizon. "Look, George," he said, "this will be our world in future.... It will be good for us both to live here; for if I need solace, you will gain equally.... No more confinement, my dear little fellow; we are rich enough to live in the country as philosophers.... And when I am gone ... for one must provide for everything...." He stopped. I remember that a broken-winded barrel organ ground out a polka behind the screen of limes which shut off the village. My father had suddenly become serious, and the solemnity of his last words moved me deeply. Then that distant melancholy air made me shudder. When he had finished speaking, he coughed for a long time. We were seated on the slope, our backs to the house, facing the vast plain, the silence of which was rendered more overwhelming by the jarring notes of the barrel organ. "Father," I murmured, as if in prayer, "what do you mean?" In reply he drew me towards him, took my head in his hands and looked at me long, his eyes lost in mine; then he embraced me, attempted to smile, and said:-- "It is nothing. I am well, am I not? Why do my family worry me with their advice? Indeed, they will frighten me with their long faces and perpetual visits.... To-day at least I have escaped from them.... We two are alone ... free! Soon it will be always so!" Despite this reanimation, an inexpressible agony wrung my heart, and I made no effort to escape from this influence, which I felt to be due to our deep sympathy. Regret was already mingled with my delight; and on this exquisite afternoon there was that heart-rending sense of things which have been and will never be again--never.