The pretty country village, where I had so often breakfasted before a day’s shooting, seemed to be sixty miles farther away . . . For a moment we all three looked blankly at each other. At last old Guillard rose from his seat, took up his gun and his lantern, muttering between his teeth: —I am going to close the Pacôme gate, he said, with an heroic gesture. Close the Pacôme gate! It seemed easy to say; and yet I fancy the good fellow will find some difficulty in doing it. For the last century the old door of the cloister has been ajar; the forest has taken advantage of the aperture to slip through, and the indiscreet brambles have climbed in by all the cracks of its disjointed planks. If we have to undergo a siege, I do not rely much on that gate. [Picture: The Corbeil bridge] * * * * * [Picture: The Hermitage] _September_ 5_th_. . . . Long had I sought a solitary corner, not too far away from Paris, and yet not much frequented by Parisians. One day, while crossing the forest of Sénart, I discovered the Hermitage, and for the last ten years I have spent all my summers there. It was a monastery of “Cordeliers,” burnt down in ‘93. The four principal walls remain standing, but mouldering and crumbling at intervals, making on the turf, heaps of red stone quickly re-clothed by a rich and luxuriant vegetation: poppies, barley, stiff-growing plants with regular and pointed leaves, are divided by the stones like inlaid metal-work. One gateway looks on the road; the other, that famous Pacôme gate, opens on to the wooded thickets and the little hidden paths, full of balsam and wild mint, where, on a misty morning, I have often fancied I saw disappear, the hood of some old monk gathering wild herbs. Here and there along the wall, low postern gates, disused for many a century, send through the darkness of the forest long rays of light, as if the cloister contained all the sunlight of the woods. [Picture: Gateway to the Hermitage] Inside is waste land, with burnt-up grass, little gardens belonging to the peasants, some orchards divided by trellis-work, and two or three houses built of that red stone that is found in the quarries of the wood. [Picture: Robert’s workroom in the Hermitage] The forester lives in one of these houses, the other is never let. Mine, a kind of irregular and curious turret, is chiefly remarkable for the Virginian creeper that completely covers it. I have cut away just enough of it to be able to open my windows. Leaving untouched the great worm-eaten beams in the kitchen and the worn step on the threshold, I contented myself with heightening a hayloft under the roof, replacing the walls by glass, and thus making a beautiful studio, where my only neighbours are the nests of the wood-pigeon and magpie swaying to and fro on the top of the trees.