I had been pushing my bicycle, despite its various gears, up a long heavy slope. Once again in the saddle, I had penetrated into a wild valley, a mere gorge at first, then broadening into field and forest, with a pool in the lower distance. The brilliant bouquet that autumn can make if it pleases, of water and trees and bushes massed upon a mountain side, was before me--autumn, the flower time of the woods, when the heaviest burdens have fallen and the spring of trunk and branch and airy foliage show all the indescribable hues of light. Golden lindens, pale elms, ruddy chestnuts, copper horse-chestnuts, rusty oaks, purplish fruit trees, poplars like golden candle-sticks, form under the level rays of sunlight, a fairy train: it is a gay parade that would cause a thrill of joyful amazement, did not the lightest whispering breeze threaten the loss of all the marvellous attire. Dread and pleasure meet in October walks, dread that comes with the pleasure that is fleeting. It was Sunday, and I had met no one. A village through which I had passed was as if dead. The women were no doubt at church, the men in the wine-shop. From the whole valley, as from a vast deserted garden, arose a perfume of old legend, which I inhaled with rapture. The country here had the look of some deserted park, and I was keen to discover some abandoned habitation in it. Any usual modern villa would have dishonoured this ageless landscape. Nothing would answer my mood but a confusion of ancient stones and wild vines, or at least real ruins, authentic and crumbling. To tell the truth, it was not ruins that I had perceived on the hillside at the end of the avenue of more than century-old oaks. The avenue led up to a terrace ornamented by urns and stretching all along the front of the house. The urns were empty and no one had thought to mow the grass. The chateau was a large building, with mullioned windows, and a sort of cloister running its entire length, and but for these ivy wreathed arcades would have appeared almost commonplace. The dark tone of its walls gave it an aspect of venerable age, with all the added solitude of silence and the melancholy of the season and the surrounding forest. There it stood, in its own well-sheltered place, presenting its front, as an old man his face, to the warmth of the sun, letting the days flow by. A clump of yellow chrysanthemums and a few climbing roses gave it the look of a faint smile. I dismounted to enter into communion with this old place. The gate was open; indeed the hinges, being sprung, would not allow it to be shut. A lodge at the entrance was almost hidden among the trees, overwhelmed as with a flood of greenery by their luxuriant growth. As I drew nearer I observed that several oaks had been replaced by horse-chestnuts, the rapid growth of which had speedily filled the gaps that time had made in the avenue. A peasant was raking up the nuts, though they seemed to me to be uneatable.