I have still to tell of the garden. But if I describe it as it seems to me, you will think, like the lady from Paris, that it is one of those vast domains that surround historic châteaux. I have never yet been able to understand, as I walk in it now, how it could once have seemed so large to me; but as soon as I am no longer there it regains its true importance in my memory. Perhaps it is because in those days it was so ill kept that one easily gained the impression of being lost in it. With the exception of the kitchen-garden, the beds of which were straight and orderly, every part of it was at haphazard. In the orchard, where pears and peaches that our insinuating fingers were forever testing never succeeded in ripening before they were picked, the grass grew thick and tall, as tall as me, upon my word! Always, in the orchard, I used to think of the virgin forests that the Children of Captain Grant travelled through. A rose garden, the _chef d’œuvre_ of a flower-loving ancestor, bloomed in a corner whenever it felt so disposed, and with no aid either from pruning shears or watering pot. Mother used to work in it in her moments of rare leisure, but it really needed an expert in the art. The alleys were overgrown with weeds--one had to search to find a path. On the other hand, other walks that had never been laid out appeared in the very midst of the grass plots. And just under mother’s windows there was a fountain; you didn’t hear it in the daytime, you were so used to it, but in the night, when all was still, its monotonous wail filled all the silence and made me sad, I did not know why. I have forgotten to mention the vines that were trained against the farm buildings, and which interested us only when we could relieve them of their grapes. And now at last I come to the loveliest tangle imaginable of bushes, brambles, nettles, and all sorts of wild plants, that was our own special domain. There we were masters and sovereign lords. There was nothing more before you reached the surrounding wall except a chestnut grove, which was simply an extension of our own empire. When I say chestnut grove, I mean four or five chestnut trees. But one alone could cast a wide shade. There was one whose roots had overthrown a section of the wall. By this open breach, which I never approached without a sense of discomfort, I used to imagine that robbers might come in. To be sure, I was armed. Father had told us the stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the story of Roland and various other tales of adventure, from the hearing of which I would sally forth all on fire, impetuous and heroic. By turns I would be the furious Roland or the magnanimous Hector. With my wooden sword I would give mortal combat to Greeks or Saracens, impersonated by certain shrubs, but of which the peaceable cabbages and unoffending beets sometimes bore the brunt as I cut right and left among them.