Every paradise has its serpent, however, and this one is so infested by mosquitoes during the season when picnics seem most natural, that those of my visitors who have been taken there for a treat have invariably lost their tempers and made the quiet shores ring with their wailing and lamentations. These despicable but irritating insects don’t seem to have anything to do but to sit in multitudes on the sand, waiting for any prey Providence may send them; and as soon as the carriage appears they rise up in a cloud and rush to meet us, almost dragging us out bodily, and never leave us until we drive away again. The sudden view of the sea from the mossy, pine-covered height directly above it where we picnic; the wonderful stretch of lonely shore with the forest to the water’s edge; the colored sails in the blue distance; the freshness, the brightness, the vastness,--all is lost upon the picnickers, and made worse than indifferent to them, by the perpetual necessity they are under of fighting these horrid creatures. It is nice being the only person who ever goes there or shows it to anybody, but if more people went, perhaps the mosquitoes would be less lean, and hungry, and pleased to see us. But on a brilliant winter’s day my conscience is as clear as the frosty air itself, and yesterday morning we started off in the gayest of spirits. Only our eyes were allowed to peep out from the fur and woolen wrappings necessary to our heads if we would come back with our ears and noses in the same places they were in when we started, and for the first two miles the mirth created by each other’s strange appearance was uproarious,--a fact I mention merely to show what an effect dry, bright, intense cold produces on healthy bodies, and how much better it is to go out in it and enjoy it than to stay indoors and sulk. As we passed through the neighboring village with cracking of whip and jingling of bells, heads popped up at the windows to stare, and the only living thing in the silent, sunny street was a melancholy fowl with ruffled feathers, which looked at us reproachfully as we dashed with so much energy over the crackling snow. “Oh, foolish bird!” Irais called out as we passed; “you’ll be indeed a cold fowl if you stand there motionless, and every one prefers them hot in weather like this!” And then we all laughed exceedingly, as though the most splendid joke had been made, and before we had done we were out of the village and in the open country beyond, and could see my house and garden far away behind, glittering in the sunshine; and in front of us lay the forest, with its vistas of pines stretching away into infinity, and a drive through it of fourteen miles before we reached the sea.