The sadder the season, the greater its harmony with myself; the time of hoar-frost makes communication less easy and isolates those who dwell in country-places: one feels more beyond the reach of men. A moral character clings to autumn scenery: those leaves which fall like our years, those flowers which fade like our days, those clouds which fleet like our illusions, that light which fails like our intelligence, that sun which cools like our love, those streams which freeze like our life bear a secret relation to our destinies. I beheld with ineffable pleasure the return of the season of storms, the passing of the swans and the ring-doves, the muster of the crows on the pond field, and their perching at nightfall on the tallest oaks in the Great Mall. When the evening raised a bluish vapor in the cross-roads of the forest, and the plaintive lays of the wind moaned in the withered moss, I entered into full possession of the sympathies of my nature. If I met some ploughman at the end of a field, I stopped to look at that man who had shot up in the shadow of the wheat with which he was to be reaped, and who, turning over the earth of his tomb with the plough-share, mingled his burning sweat with the icy rains of autumn: the furrow which he dug was the monument intended to outlive him. What did my elegant dæmon then do? By means of her magic, she wafted me to the banks of the Nile, and showed me the Egyptian pyramid sunk beneath the dust, as one day the Armorican furrow would lie hidden beneath the heather: I congratulated myself on having placed the fables of my felicity beyond the circle of human realities. In the evening I embarked upon the pond, and, alone in my boat, rowed amidst the rushes and the broad floating leaves of the water-lilies. Overhead was the meeting-place of the swallows preparing to quit our climes. Not one of their twitterings did I lose; the child Tavernier[172] followed less closely the traveller's tale. They played on the water at sundown, chased the flies, darted together into the air, as though to test their wings, dropped down upon the surface of the lake, and then perched upon the reeds, which scarcely bent beneath their weight, and which were filled with their warbling turmoil.