[Picture: Meeting with Casaquet again] This quiet, ant-like existence on the surface of the earth amidst the overthrow of a world was most extraordinary. I too could have lived there like the old peasant, reduced to the same expedients of primitive life; and this different view of war appeared to me an appropriate setting for a melancholy picture of the invasion. That very evening I began in the large studio taking notes for “Robert Helmont’s Diary of a Recluse;” while the passing to and fro under my windows of the German cavalry patrols, still encamped on the edge of the country, the clashing of swords and jingling of curb-chains, the rough Saxon voices harshly raised in command, mingled with the thunder of the cannons. All this indeed formed part of “my diary.” My feelings were still more excited on the following day by all the sad details of the military occupation—the roads dark with troops, the halting and the bivouacking by the side of the ditches. To escape from the humiliating sensations of the vanquished, I wandered into the woods, lovely in this month of April: a tender green clothed the branches of the trees, the grass was gemmed with the bloom of wild hyacinths, and the warbling of the birds and the song of the nightingale were interrupted by the distant tearing sound of the mitrailleuse. Sometimes, at the turn of a quiet path, I saw coming toward me under the arching boughs, a sentimental Saxon colonel, slowly pacing on his charger the lanes and trysting-places cherished by Louis XV. and Madame de Pompadour. Then I plunged into the recesses of the deepest thickets, for these encounters gave me a revulsion of feeling which I can hardly explain. It was thus that I lived the diary of Robert Helmont at the same time that I wrote it. This little book was published by Dentu in the _Musée Universal_ of 1873; but it met with little success. It told no story, and contained no interesting or continued narrative; it was merely a succession of landscapes, portraying the melancholy of our invaded summer haunts. In the new edition of my complete works published by Dentu-Charpentier, “Robert Helmont” is placed at the end of the second volume of “Jack,” and it finds there its proper place, describing as it does the same forest of Sénart, the Hermitage, and the Pacôme Gate, where I knew the hero of my novel “Jack,” and recalling to life a few of the same characters. [Picture: Abandoned garden chairs] * * * * * [Picture: Rural scene] THE HERMITAGE, _September_ 3_rd_.