8 November — My Herbarium, 



with its healthier influences ; we had nothing around us 

 but the dulness of advanced decay. From sunrise to 

 sunset, or, more accurately in a valley shrouded by mist, 

 from the time when the cloud grew paler in the morning 

 to the time when it grew dark again in the afternoon, 

 we remained in the house together. Our heavy baggage 

 arrived from the distant railway station in the middle of 

 the day, and we found an occupation in unpacking the 

 various cases and in settling our interior arrangements. 

 There was plenty of space in the old building, and, with 

 unlimited supplies of excellent firewood, we were under 

 no necessity for limiting our existence to the apartments 

 we had especially selected as our own. We had dejeuner 

 in the dining-room, but it seemed so large and dreary, 

 with its broad stone floor and the black beams in the 

 rude old ceiling, that we determined not to eat in it any 

 more, and dined that evening in a circular cabinet, which 

 occupied the basement of one of the round towers — a 

 cabinet which had been used by a lady of our family 

 two generations before, and had still the charm of a 

 faded elegance that affected the mind like the faint per- 

 fume of withered flowers. 



The German invaders of Lorraine had carried away 

 the greater part of my library and my little collection of 

 pictures. My herbarium, which it had taken me years 

 to collect and classify, had gone I knew not whither ; 

 possibly some scientific invader may have been tempted 

 by the rarer plants, and appropriated them, leaving the 

 rest to comrades less enlightened, who may have used 

 them to kindle fires. Even the cabinets that contained 



