October — Close of our Sylvan Year. 235 



XLV. 



Close of our Sylvan Year — What is a Year ? — My Schemes — Alexis 

 — Master and Pupil — Holidays — Alexis and the Gamekeeper — A 

 Private Tutor — A Young Abbe — Our Dinner-table — The Abbe sees 

 a Ghost — Alexis turns Sportsman — What Alexis learned during 

 the Sylvan Year — Conclusion. 



HERE, perhaps, it is well that these notes should 

 come to an end ; for we began them with the late 

 autumn, and have now completed our cycle. Our year 

 of retirement, our sylvan year, is drawing to its close, 

 and we leave the Val Ste. VeVonique to return to the 

 outer world. We always begin by expecting too much 

 from the time that lies before us, as if the experience of 

 the past were not there for a warning, with its long list 

 of schemes unrealized, its losses (especially of time), and 

 its disappointments. When I came with Alexis to our 

 lonely house in the valley, I expected more from this 

 space of calm and peace than it appears to have yielded 

 now that it lies behind me in a retrospect. i A year,' I 

 thought, 'will do much towards the healing of my 

 sorrows ; and in a year I can learn much, and acquire 

 a beneficial influence over Alexis.' But what is a year 

 in the life of a mature man ? All the old impressions 

 remain just as vivid after it as before; and the more 

 painful they were then, the more vivid they are now. 

 Still the stud) of Nature has been good for me, and it 



