When at the distance of about a mile and a half from the spot which the blacksmith had indicated, the Count gave his horse to his servants, and bade them wait there for his return. He wandered on slowly, slackening his pace as much to enjoy the beauty and brightness of the scene around, as to let the appointed time arrive for his meeting with the leader of the band we have mentioned. When he had gone on about a hundred yards, however, he heard in the distance the wild but characteristic notes of a little instrument, at that time, and even in the present day, delighted in throughout Poitou, and known there by the pleasant and harmonious name of the musette. Sooth to say, it differs but little, though it does in a degree, from the ordinary bagpipe; and yet there is not a peasant in Poitou, and scarcely a noble of the province either, who will not tell you that it is the sweetest and most harmonious instrument in the world. It requires, however, to be heard in a peculiar manner, and at peculiar seasons: either, as very often happens in the small towns of that district, in the dead of the night, when it breaks upon the ear as the player walks along the street beneath your window, with a solemn and plaintive melody, that seems scarcely of the earth; or else in the morning and evening tide, heard at some little distance amongst the hills and valleys of that sunny land, when it sounds like the spirit of the winds, singing a wild ditty to the loveliness of the scene. The Count de Morseiul had quite sufficient national, or perhaps we should say provincial, feeling to love the sound of the musette; and he paused to listen, as, with a peculiar beauty and delicacy of touch, the player poured on the sounds from the very direction in which he was proceeding. He did not hasten his pace, however, enjoying it as he went; and still the nearer and nearer he came to the _chênt vert_, the closer he seemed to approach to the spot whence the sounds issued. It is true the player could not see him, as he came in an oblique line from the side of the water, to which at various places the wood approached very near. But the moment that the Count turned the angle of the rock which we have mentioned, and on the top of which stood the large evergreen oak, from which it took its name, he beheld a group which might well have furnished a picture for a Phyllis and a Corydon to any pastoral poet that ever penned an idyl or an eclogue. Seated on a little grassy knoll, under one of the green hawthorns, was a girl apparently above the common class, with a veil, which she seemed to have lately worn over her head, cast down beside her, and with her dark hair falling partly upon her face as it bent over that of a man, seated, or rather stretched, at her feet, who, supporting himself on one elbow, was producing from the favourite instrument of the country the sounds which the Count had heard.