"That brings back memories." Rosanette does not know exactly what they are. But her formula translates--and with what sincerity!--the charm of old châteaux and old gardens about which floats the odor of past centuries. She "yawns immoderately" while breathing this vague perfume, because she is unfamiliar with literature. Nevertheless, she instinctively feels and respects the melancholy and distinguished reveries of those who know the history of France. And besides, if these latter in their turn desired to express the pleasure which they feel in visiting historic places, I would defy them to find any other words than those which Rosanette herself uses. This pleasure is one of the most lively which can be felt by a loiterer who loves the past, but whose listless imagination requires, to set it in motion, the vision of old architecture and the suggestion of landscapes. It is also one of those which can most easily be experienced. The soil of France is so impregnated with history! Everywhere, "that brings back memories." It is, therefore, to seek "memories" that I visited Maintenon and its park on a clear and limpid October afternoon. I had previously read once more the correspondence of Madame de Maintenon and run through a few letters of Madame de Sévigné. My memory is somewhat less untrained than that of Rosanette. But, nevertheless, I am startled, on the day when I wish to learn again, to perceive how many things I have unlearned, if I ever knew them. ***** The Chateau of Maintenon dates from the sixteenth century. Since then it has been continued and enlarged without rigorous following of the original plan. It is built of stone and brick, worked and chiseled like the jewels of the French Renaissance. Its two unsymmetrical wings terminate, the one in a great donjon of stone, the other in a round tower of brick. Some parts have been restored, others have preserved their aspect of ancientness.... But here, as everywhere else, time has performed its harmonizing work, and what the centuries have not yet finished, the soft October light succeeds in completing. Diversity of styles, discordances between different parts of the construction, bizarre and broken lines traced against the sky by the inequalities of the roofs, the turrets, the towers and the donjon, neither disconcert nor shock us. All these things fuse into a robust and elegant whole. The very contrasts, born of chance, appear like the premeditated fancy of an artist who conceived a work at once imposing and graceful. The artist is the autumn sun.