124 " Pauvrc Genevieve" [AUG. 



reminded me so forcibly of those lordly times, for ever passed away from 

 the world, which fancy delights to invest with such romantic reverence. 

 The pleasure of the associations, however, which the appearances of the 

 chateau were calculated to excite, was materially qualified in its tone hy 

 those moral conclusions, which the awful solitude that reigned throughout 

 the edifice pressed upon my mind, in the triumph that time had obtained 

 over the glory and grandeur of the past. 



My object in visiting this chateau was for the satisfaction of a trifling 

 curiosity, which I will account for in detailing an adventure connected 

 with it, that befel a friend of mine some years since, and which 1 was 

 informed of by himself. 



In the year 1 790, Eugene B d, an officer in the French service, and 

 a man of a lively as well as a generous and intrepid disposition, when on 

 his way to visit a sick parent at Avignon, being fatigued with the diligence, 

 which he had chosen as his conveyance, hired a horse within thirty miles 

 of Pont-Saint-Esprit, with the intention of proceeding so far on horseback, 

 and there resuming his seat in the lumbering vehicle. After pursuing the 

 proper route, at a very leisurely pace, for the greatest part of the day, he 

 unwittingly suffered his Rozinante to select his own path, and found him- 

 self at length, as the sun was descending, on the borders of a thick grove, 

 and in a broken region, which exhibited no traces of a high road. He 

 here paused for some minute*, shook off his reverie, examined his situation 

 with an anxious eye, and then galloped forward at random, until, discover- 

 ing neither house nor individual in the open country, he plunged into the 

 wood. It was now twilight, and he began to entertain fears of being 

 obliged to remain until morning under a canopy more suitable to the views 

 and tastes of an astrologer, than to those of a hungry traveller, whose expe- 

 rience, as a soldier, of " lying out," had not endeared the practice to his 

 fancy, although duty had rendered it familiar to him. He had not pro- 

 ceeded far in the entangled copse, when he descried, through the waving 

 boughs of the forest-trees, the towers of the chateau in question ; and in 

 that direction he pushed vigorously on, so as speedily to reach the great 

 lawn which stretches before the western front of the edifice, and to have as 

 full a view of this side as the thickening shadows of the night would allow. 

 No light appearing at any of the windows, he dismounted, fastened his 

 horse to the shrubbery, and proceeding to the massy portal, which was just 

 perceptible in the gloom of the scene, began to summon with his utmost 

 strength, at its ponderous knocker, the inhabitants of the chateau (if any 

 it contained) to speak with him. His first summons, which was long and 

 loud, remaining unattended to, his hopes sank within him, as the hollow 

 echo of the knocker died away in the halls of the chateau, that he should 

 here meet with assistance ; but, on attempting a second, it was not long 

 before he distinguished the sound of voices and footsteps, and enjoyed the 

 satisfaction of hearing from an elderly man, in the dress of a labourer, who 

 carried a taper in his hand, and cautiously opened the smaller door in the 

 middle of the archway, the inquiry, " What was wanted by the person 

 without?" When our traveller explained his case, he was admitted at 

 once, and saw himself in the midst of a group, consisting of several females 

 and two or three men, of different ages, none of whom appeared to be above 

 the condition of the upper peasantry. The oldest of the women, and 

 apparently the superior, invited him, with a countenance of good-humoured 

 civility, to enter the first apartment on the right, where she trusted he would 



