There was the forest and there was the lake.... The forest, with certain farms and vineyards, made part of a historic domain, the château of which, after enduring sieges and entertaining great personages of the army or the church, was half in ruins and no longer habitable. The whole property belonged to a retired colonel of cavalry, son of a Baron of the Empire, whose fortune not being sufficient to keep it up decently, he was permitting it to fall into decay. He lived alone and spent the whole day riding about on one or another of his old horses, without ever going beyond his estate. Though it was entirely surrounded with a wall grandfather and I used to find our way in by breaches which we had discovered. He led me about among the trees, taught me to distinguish their characteristics, and encouraged me to sit down under their shade, on the moss and not on the treacherous benches which we perceived sparsely scattered here and there, the woodwork of which was rotten with damp. Grass was growing in the alleys, which under over-arching trees guided the gaze to portals of light, that seemed on one side to be blue, because of the lake which they framed in. It was the month of June. A thousand tones of green were mingling, marrying, all around us, from the pale green of the parasite mistletoe to the almost black of the ivy which climbed the oak trunks. Spring was singing its whole gamut around us. And under the trees there still remained heaps of red leaves, vestiges of the former season. I felt a vague fear at being thus alone, we two, amidst so imposing and silent an assembly, and I tried to talk, in order to make our presence there seem more real. “Hush!” said grandfather; “be still and listen.” Listen to what? And yet, little by little, I began to perceive a multitude of soft sounds. We were no longer alone, as I had thought; innumerable living things were all around us. Far away two chaffinches were calling to one another at regular intervals. The more distant one took up softly the couplet which the other was pouring forth from a full throat. From tree to tree the latter drew nearer. I saw him, my eye met his--so little and round! As I did not stir, he remained. But what could be those dull, reiterated blows? Woodpeckers, tapping the trunks with their bills. Long bands of light glided here and there between the branches and lay upon the ground; in their rays, which brought out the shapes of the leaves, spiders’ webs were swinging, their finest threads plain to see, and wasps, buzzing as they flew about. At last I could even hear the rustling of the grass;--the secret labour of the earth under the influence of heat. I was discovering a life of which I had never dreamed. “What is that call, grandfather?” I asked in a low tone. “It must be a hare; let’s hide, and perhaps, if you are very quiet, we shall see it before long.”