All of this, I know, you can read in the biographies of Bossuet and, if you have not already done it, do not fail to read it in M. Rebelliau's book. But things have mysterious suggestiveness, and when we have seen the beautiful garden of the bishop's house at Meaux and the charming country about Germigny, we are more disposed to believe that the Bossuet of the modern historians is the true Bossuet. I have not verified their researches; but I have read Le Dieu and I have walked upon the terrace along the Marne; that is sufficient. And I would be ungrateful if I failed to add that I had the most amiable and the best informed of guides in my promenade: the Abbé Formé, priest of Germigny, deserving of the parish of Bossuet, in all simplicity. IV. SAINTE RADEGONDE |I HAD heard that, deep in the forest of Montmorency, near the hermitage of Sainte Radegonde, there might be found a little cemetery lost in the midst of the woods. I wondered who had chosen this romantic burial place. One of my friends, to whom I had imparted my curiosity, sent me a book by M. Auguste Rey, entitled _Le Naturaliste Bosc_, and assured me that I would there find enlightenment on the mystery which intrigued me. I read it, and the story told by M. Auguste Rey increased my desire to become acquainted with the cemetery of Sainte Radegonde. [2] So, on an October afternoon, I wandered in the forest seeking tombs. The search was long and charming. As the forest of Montmorency is not provided with guideposts, it is impossible not to get lost in it. But the magnificence of the weather, the miraculous splendor of the golden and coppery foliage, the lightness of the luminous mists which float over the reddened forest, the perfume of the softened earth and of the moist leaves, make one quickly forget the humiliation of having lost his way. Following one path after another, I ended by stumbling upon Sainte Radegonde. The place is well known to all walkers. Of the ancient priory, which was founded here in the thirteenth century by the monks of the Abbey of Saint Victor, there is left no more than a tumbledown building which serves today as a ranger's house. It is surrounded by a wall, so that it is no longer possible to approach the well which formerly attracted numerous pilgrims to Sainte Radegonde, for this saint cured, it is said, the itch and sterility. Before the hermitage of Sainte Radegonde (the word hermitage was made fashionable in this country by Jean Jacques Rousseau) there opens a vast glade, whose slope descends to the brooklet called Ru du Nid-de-l'Aigle, which flows in the midst of a scrub of blackberries and hawthorns. At the end of the meadow, half hidden by copses, there rises a little bluff which elbows the stream aside. Here is the cemetery. A few very simple graves surround a little boulder on which is carved: "Bosc, Member of the Institute." Four great cedars overlook them with their superb shafts.