"The gardens extended a considerable distance. They included on one side a kitchen garden and a vineyard, and on the other, to give the effect of what the French call an English garden, a wood had been considered a necessary requisite. It was cut out in walks, one of which led to the _ferme_ and another to the hermitage, so that the garden may be said to have possessed every requisite for a perfect garden. But absurd as this reunion of _bois_, hermitage and _ferme_, may sound, the gardens were really pretty, and the connecting of the kitchen garden and the vineyard with the pleasure ground not only added to its extent, but its variety. I have often thought that our English kitchen gardens, by a little more variety in their form and by an intermixture of shrubbery, might be converted into an ornamental instead of a formal addition to our country houses. "Adjoining the drawing-room was a room, prettily furnished, in which I slept, and which also formed a not uncomfortable sitting-room when I wished to be alone. Behind the drawing-room was the dining-room, which, like all French dining-rooms, had the appearance of an anteroom. It opened into the library where there was a good collection of books and also of minerals, indeed, there was hardly anything of which there was _not_ a collection. "On one occasion I incurred Madame V.'s serious displeasure. A hornet's nest had been discovered, and, as it was voted a great curiosity, was placed by Madame's orders among the other specimens of Natural history in the library. Warmed into life by the heat of the room, some of the hornets began to show signs of activity. The prospect was far from pleasant, and, alarmed at the disagreeable interruption about to be offered to my studies, I secretly commissioned a servant to throw the hornet's nest into the water. Boundless was the indignation of Madame V, on finding that I had deprived her museum of so great a treasure; and it was a considerable time before an act of such temerity on my part was forgiven.