The approach is very picturesque.--Driving through a broad avenue, lined with venerable trees, you come to a star, the centre of which is marked by a stone obelisk surmounted by a sphere of gilded copper: five roads form the points of the star. Then the land suddenly descends. The road plunges down into a narrow valley, with a small stream flowing at the bottom, which is crossed by a bridge of a single span; then, ascends the opposite slope, where the village lies, whose slated church-tower can be seen among the thatched roofs and the rounded tops of the apple-trees. The view is not very extensive, for it is limited on both sides by the crest of the hill, but it is bright and pleasant and rests the eye.--Beside the bridge there is a mill and a tower-shaped structure built of red stone: almost incessant barking and the sight of a brach-hound or two and some young terriers with crooked legs warming themselves in the sun before the door, would inform you that it was the head-keeper's abode, if the buzzards and martens nailed to the shutters could leave you for a moment in doubt. At that point an avenue of sorb-trees begins; the red berries attract clouds of birds; as there is little passing, there is only a band of white in the middle of the road; all the rest is covered with short, fine moss, and, in the double rut made by carriage wheels, little grasshoppers, as green as emeralds, buzz and hop about. After driving some little distance along this avenue you come to a painted iron fence, with gilt trimmings, and bristling with spikes and _chevaux de frise._ Thence the road leads to the château--which is still invisible, for it is buried in verdure like a bird in its nest--but its progress is leisurely and it frequently turns aside to visit a brook and a fountain, a dainty summer-house or a point from which a fine view can be had, crossing and recrossing the stream over Chinese or rustic bridges. The inequality of the land and the dams built for the purposes of the mill cause several waterfalls some four or five feet in height, and you can imagine nothing more delightful than to hear the splashing of all these cascades close beside you, but generally out of sight, for the osiers and elders that line the bank form an almost impenetrable curtain. But all that part of the park is, so to speak, only the antechamber of the other part: unfortunately, a public highway passes through the estate and cuts it in two, a drawback for which a very ingenious remedy has been devised. Two high crenelated walls, provided with barbicans and loopholes in imitation of a ruined fortress, stand on each side of the road; connected with a tower on the château side, completely covered by gigantic ivy plants, is a genuine drawbridge which is lowered every morning, by iron chains, upon the opposite bastion. You drive through a lovely ogive archway inside the tower, and thence into the second enclosure, where the trees,