42 HOW THE AUTHOR WAS LED TO 



I resume. 



See me now torn from the city by this loving inquietude, by 

 my fears for an invalid whom it was essential to restore to the 

 conditions of her early life and the free air of the country, I 

 quitted Paris, my city, which I had never left before; that city 

 which comprises the three worlds ; that cradle of Ai't and Thought. 



I returned there daily for my duties and occupations ; but I 

 hastened to get quit of it. Its noise, its distant hum, the ebb and 

 flow of abortive revolutions, impelled me to wander afar. It was 

 with much pleasure that, in the spring of 1852, I broke through all 

 the ties of old habits; I closed my library with a bitter joy, I put 

 under lock and key my books, the companions of my life, which 

 had assuredly thought to hold me bound for ever. I travelled so 

 lono- as eai-th supported me, and only halted at Nantes, close to the 

 sea, on a hiU which overlooks the yeUow streams of Brittany as they 

 How onward to mingle, in the Loii-e, with the gray waters of La Vendee. 



We established ourselves in a large country mansion, conqjletely 

 isolated, in the midst of the constant rains with which our western 

 fields are inundated at this season. At such a distance from the 

 ocean, one does not feel its briny influence; the rains are tempests 

 of fresh water. The house, in the Louis Quinze style, had been 

 uninhabited for a considerable period, and at first sight seemed a 

 little gloomy. Situated on elevated ground, it was rendered not the 

 less sombre by thick hedges on the one side, on the other by tall 

 trees and by an untold number of unpruned cheny-trees. The 

 whole, on a greensward, which the midrained waters preserved, 

 even in summer, in a beautifully fresh condition. 



I adore neglected gardens, and this one reminded me of the 

 great abandoned vineyards of the Italian villas; but it possessed, 

 what these villas lack, a charming medley of vegetables and 

 plants of a thousand difl"erent species — all the herbs of the St. John, 

 and each herb tall and vigorous. The forest of cheny-trees, bending 

 under their burden of scarlet fruit, gave also the idea of inex- 

 haustible abundance. 



