Built upon the slope of a long range of hills, Whence the eye may wander far across the neighboring plains.^ The Seine, at the foot of the mountains which are washed by its waves, Beholds twenty islets rise from the bosom of its waters, Which, dividing its flow in diverse manners, Form twenty rivers from a single stream. All its banks are covered with wildling willows And with walnut trees often scourged by the passer-by.... These verses are a little rough, a tiny bit difficult. Lyric quality and picturesqueness were not the business of Boileau. Like all his contemporaries--omitting La Fontaine and Sévigné--he neither knew how to describe a landscape nor to translate its emotion. From this incapacity it has been assumed that the men and the women of the seventeenth century were indifferent to the charm of nature.... They were not pantheists, assuredly; they had neither ecstasies nor tremblings before the "dramas" of light and the "savage beauties" of the ocean or of the peaks.... But they understood and felt the grace of a beautiful valley. Since we have met the rural Boileau upon our way, let us collect his souvenirs of country residences. Let us first remark that if his description of Haute-Isle somewhat resembles a page of pen and ink drawing, we nevertheless find indicated there all of the particulars by which this landscape enchants us: the contrast of the rough, wild slope with the wide plain which stretches beyond the Seine, the grace of the river and its islands, the verdure of the willows and the walnuts. And Boileau does not forget to show us--by a somewhat obscure periphrase--the urchin who, as he passes along the road, brings down the nuts by hurling stones. [Illustration: 0257] What does Boileau do when he is in the country? He makes verses naturally, since his business is to be a poet. Here, in a valley which answers all my needs, I buy at little expense solid pleasures: Sometimes, with book in hand, wandering in the meadows, _I occupy my mind with useful thoughts;_ Sometimes seeking the end of a line which I have constructed I find in a nook of the woods the word which had escaped me.... Behold the solid pleasures of a constructor of verses, the friend of useful reveries. Reporters have recently questioned our men of letters as to how they "employ their vacations."... They have replied in prose by confidences quite like those which Boileau addressed in verse to M. Lamoignon, advocate general. But at Hautile, Boileau sometimes stopped to dream and rhyme; then, he "jestingly allured the too eager fish"; or, he "made war on the inhabitants of the air"; and he tasted, on returning from the chase, the pleasure of an "agreeable and rustic" repast.