The estate, under the forester's care, had improved a little and promised a modest income. The house, though somewhat dilapidated, was easily made livable. But the one thing that was full of glory and splendor, triumphantly prosperous, was the great avenue of beeches. Their long, low aisle of broad arches was complete. They shimmered with a pearly mist of buds in early spring and later with luminous green of tender leafage. In mid-summer they formed a wide, still stream of dark, unruffled verdure; in autumn they were transmuted through glowing yellow into russet gold; in winter their massy trunks were pillars of gray marble and the fan-tracery of their rounded branches was delicately etched against the sky. “Look at them,” the baron would say to the guests whom the fame of his learning and the charm of his wide-ranging conversation often brought to his house. “Those beeches were planted by my grandfather after the battle of Wagram, when Napoleon whipped the Austrians. After that came the Beresina and Leipsic and Waterloo and how many battles and wars of furious, perishable men. Yet the trees live on peaceably, they unfold their strength in beauty, they have not yet reached the summit of their grandeur. We are all _parvenus_ beside them.” “If you had to choose,” asked the great sculptor Constantin Meunier one day, “would you have your house or one of these trees struck by lightning?” “The house,” answered the botanist promptly, “for I could rebuild it in a year; but to restore the tree would take three-quarters of a century.” “Also,” said the sculptor, with a smile, “you might change the style of your house with advantage, but the style of these trees you could never improve.” “But tell me,” he continued, “is it true, as they say, that lightning never strikes a beech?” “It is not entirely true,” replied the botanist, smiling in his turn, “yet, like many ancient beliefs, it has some truth in it. There is something in the texture of the beech that seems to resist electricity better than other trees. It may be the fatness of the wood. Whatever it is, I am glad of it, for it gives my trees a better chance.” “Don't be too secure,” said the sculptor, shaking his head. “There are other tempests besides those in the clouds. When the next war comes in western Europe Belgium will be the battle-field. Beech-wood is very good to burn.” “God forbid,” said the baron devoutly. “We have had peace for a quarter of a century. Why should it not last?” “Ask the wise men of the East,” replied the sculptor grimly.