We got to the other side of the dreary pile, and the park lay before our eyes. A jumble. No more baskets of flowers, no more wide, sandy paths like winding ribbons. Except just in front of the _château_, the lawn--which had been metamorphosed into a paddock fenced with wire and given up to some cattle to feed in--had been encroached on by the valley which had relapsed into its wild state. The garden was no more than a great wood with open spaces and green paths in it. The Ardennes had reassumed their usurped domain. Lerne thoughtfully filled an immense pipe with feverish fingers, lit it, and then we went under the trees into one of the alleys that were like long caves. Once more I saw the statues and with a disillusioned eye, the statues which a former master of Fonval had erected in profusion. Those magnificent dumb personages of my dramas were as a matter of fact wretched modern figures, suggested to some commercially-minded magnate of industry of the Second Empire by Rome or Greece. The tunics of concrete swelled out into crinolines, the drapery of the cloaks was like that of a shawl, and the divinities of the woods--Echo, Syrinx, Arethusa--wore low chignons which filled their bag-like nets--in the Benoiton manner. Those hideous representations of exquisite fantasies, of forest charms transmuted into Dryads, were to-day more passable in their mantles of virgin-vine and clematis, although certain heroes were no more than ivy-clad figures of fun, and although a mere moss-clad attitude represented Diana. After walking for some time, my uncle made me sit down on a bench of stone covered with a coat of lichen, under the shade of flourishing hazels. A little crackling sound made itself heard in the bower right over our heads. Lerne jumped convulsively and raised his head. It was merely a squirrel watching us from the top of a branch. My uncle darted a ferocious glance at it, fixing it as if he were taking aim at it; then he began to laugh in a reassured sort of way. “Ha, ha, ha! it’s only a little ... thing,” said he, unable to find the word. “Really,” thought I within myself, “how queer one may become as one gets old. Environment, I know, is the cause of many evolutions; one adopts the ways and manner of speech of one’s familiars in spite of oneself; the surroundings of Lerne might suffice to explain why my uncle is dirty, expresses himself ill, speaks with a German accent and smokes that huge pipe.... But he has ceased caring for flowers, he no longer looks after his property, and at this moment looks extraordinarily nervous and preoccupied. If one adds to that the happenings of last night, it all seems something less than natural.”