It is impossible to reach Dammartin before night, so I lodge at the Image of Saint John. They usually give me a neat room hung with old tapestry, with a glass between the windows. This room shows a return to the fashion for bric-à-brac which I renounced long ago. I sleep comfortably under the eider-down covering used there. In the morning, when I throw open the casement wreathed with vines and roses, I gaze with rapture upon a wide green landscape stretching away to the horizon, where a line of poplars stand like sentinels. Here and there the villages nestle guarded by their protecting church-spires. First Othys, then Eve and Ver; Hermenonville would be visible beyond the wood, if it had a belfry, but in that philosophic spot the church has been neglected. Having filled my lungs with the pure air of these uplands, I go down stairs in good humour and start for the pastry-cook's. "Helloa, big Curly-head!" "Helloa, little Parisian!" We greet each other with sly punches in the ribs as we did in childhood, then I climb a certain stair where two children welcome my coming. Sylvie's Athenian smile lights up her classic features, and I say to myself: "Here, perhaps, is the happiness I have missed, and yet...." Sometimes I call her Lotty, and she sees in me some resemblance to Werther without the pistols, which are out of fashion now. While Big Curly-head is busy with the breakfast, we take the children for a walk through the avenues of limes that border the ruins of the old brick towers of the castle. While the little ones practise with their bows and arrows, we read some poem or a few pages from one of those old books all too short, and long forgotten by the world. I forgot to say that when Aurélie's troupe gave a performance at Dammartin, I took Sylvie to the play and asked her if she did not think the actress resembled someone she knew. "Whom, pray?" "Do you remember Adrienne?" She laughed merrily, in reply. "What an idea!" Then, as if in self-reproach, she added with a sigh: "Poor Adrienne! she died at the convent of Saint S---- about 1832." APPENDIX. '_EL DESDICHADO._' _Gérard DE NERVAL._ _I am that dark, that disinherited._ _That all dishonoured Prince of Aquitaine,_ _The Star upon my scutcheon long hath fled;_ _A black sun on my lute doth yet remain!_ _Oh, thou that didst console me not in vain,_ _Within the tomb, among the midnight dead,_ _Show me Italian seas, and blossoms wed,_ _The rose, the vine-leaf, and the golden grain._ _Say, am I Love or Phoebus? have I been_ _Or Lusignan or Biron? By a Queen_ _Caressed within the Mermaid's haunt I lay,_ _And twice I crossed the unpermitted stream,_ _And touched on Orpheus' lute as in a dream,_ _Sighs of a Saint, and laughter of a Fay!_ (ANDREW LANG.) TO ALEXANDER DUMAS.