Where shall we go to-day? There are many lovely drives in the forest. Champlieu has its Roman camp, its antique theatre and temple; Morienval its abbey church with the three Norman towers, St. Nicolas its priory, St. Pierre its ruins, St. Jean its marvellous old trees, and Ste. Perrine its lakes where the deer come to die. Shall I confess that we know these beauties still by rumour only? For we went first of all by the foot of Mont St. Mard to the hamlet of the old mill, and round the lakes of La Rouillie to Pierrefonds. And on the morrow, when we set out for Champlieu or St. Jean, after the first mile, we would cry to the driver, “Go back, and take us the same drive as yesterday.” And so three times we drove past the Vieux Moulin. This is a sad confession. But, reader, if ever you visit Compiègne, go _last_ to Pierrefonds, round by the Vieux Moulin, or, however long you stay, you will never see the rest. VII Let us set out again for the Vieux Moulin! We are soon deep in woods of oak and beech. We pass the stately avenues of the Beaux Monts; a steeper height towers above us. See, how wonderful is this deep-green glen, where the oaks rise sheer a hundred feet and more from the sheet of lily of the valley at their feet! The picturesque declivity of the dell, the beautiful growth of the trees, the whiteness and sweetness and profusion of the flowers, the something delicate, lofty, and serious about this landscape, makes a rare impression amid the opulence of April. Our glade slopes downward from the base of Mont St. Mard; at its further extremity begins the valley of the Vieux Moulin. It is a valley of meadow land beside a stream which, a thousand years ago, must have cut the shallow gorge in which it lies. On either side rises a line of hills, not high, but steep and wooded. There is just room in the valley for the small Alpine-looking hamlet and its hay-meadows. They are full of flowers; marsh-flowers down by the stream, with higher up, sheets of blue sage and yellow cowslip, and here and there a taller meadow-orchid. Somewhere among the flowers, out of sight, but never out of hearing, runs the stream that feeds the mill, the Ru de Berne.