42 
INDIVIDUALITY OF THE FOREST. 
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tors—some curse it, others bless it. A foolish dreamer 
wrote of it, on a rock near Nemours, “ I will possess 
thee, cmel stepmother!” And her lover, the old soldier 
Denecourt, who bestowed on her all that he had in 
the world, called her “My adored !” * 
Some one has said to me: “ Is she not the Viola 
of Shakespeare, with her dubious but always charming 
aspect; now a maiden, and now a cavalier ? Or his 
young page, Rosalind, after she appears as a laughing 
damsel ?” No: the contrasts are much greater. 
For the fairy here has countless faces. She has 
the cold Alpine plants, and yet she shelters the most 
delicate flora. Austere in winter and spring, she ter¬ 
rifies you with the rugged rocks which, in autumn, 
she conceals under a crimson mantle of foliage. She 
has at her disposal, for a daily change, the delicate 
tissue of floating gauze which Lantara never fails to 
spread over it in all his pictures. With her belt of 
forest she arrests on every side the light mists, and 
gaily weaves them into veils, and scarfs, and girdles; 
into all kinds of delicate disguises. You would think 
the heavy masses of sandstone invariable; yet they 
change their aspects, their colours—I was going to say 
their form—every hour. The little chain, for example, 
known as the Rock of Avon, had saluted us in the 
morning with the breath of the heather, the cheeriest 
ray of the dawn, an enchanting aurora which tinted 
* It is impossible to be grateful enough for all that M. Denecourt has clone ; he has rendered 
the place accessible by everybody, even the poorest, who are no longer in need of guides.— 
Author. 
