THE SYLVAN YEAR.

I.

A Woodland Estate-Le Val Sainte Véronique-Scenery of the Valley.

'N the heart of the forests between the vine-lands

IN

of Burgundy and the course of the river Loire my mother's family had for centuries possessed a property which had descended to myself, but which I had visited only on rare occasions. It required singularly little care from its proprietor, being nearly the whole of it forestland, and the cuttings took place only once in twenty years. The estate had been divided into five portions, and the times of cutting had been so arranged that one such period should recur every fourth year; so we came to the place each Leap-year, like the 29th of February. There were about four hundred acres of woodland, and it would be difficult to find, except on the slopes of the Alps, a similar extent of country with so little that was level. Seven miles from the nearest public road stood our ancestral habitation. It occupied the bottom of a little valley, and had for its title the name of the locality, le Val Sainte Véronique. The house was not a château, nor was it (I rejoice to say) an ordinary maison bourgeoise. It consisted of the remains of a monastic establish

2

November- A Woodland Estate.

ment which had never been either extensive or splendid, but our religious predecessors had left upon the place. that which suits my taste and temper better than either size or splendor -the impress of a quiet feeling, in harmony with the perfect seclusion that reigned there from year to year. They had left, too, a lovely chapel of perfect fourteenth-century work, which had been used by the farmer as a barn, and so little injured (for the soft hay did no harm to the delicate sculpture), that when I restored it some years since the walls and vaults required nothing but a careful cleaning, and the only serious outlay was that for a new pavement and the repair of the external roof. The monastic buildings provided a capacious residence for one of my tenants, and a house for my own family; but, as our visits had been so rare, we had gone to no expense in luxuries, and the furniture consisted of a few old things that had been left there by my maternal forefathers, who were people of simple tastes. Beyond the repair of the chapel which had not been costly, I had laid out scarcely anything on these old buildings in the Val Sainte Véronique, but I thought of them always with a certain quiet affection, and sought their shelter willingly in the time of my deepest sorrow, going to that secluded place with a halfreligious feeling, as if its monastic associations invited me, and made the retreat more perfect and its tranquillity

more serene.

I have said that the buildings were situated in a little. valley. Three tiny meadows occupied the bottom, like a carpet of greenest velvet, and in the midst of them

flowed a stream, about four yards wide, whose water was of the most lucid purity, and abundant even in the fiercest heats of summer. The hills around were so steep that they derived some sublimity from their steepness, but they were not exceedingly lofty, the highest of them not rising to more than seven hundred feet above the stream's level. Entirely clothed with wood, they offered an appearance of great richness, especially in the golden weeks of autumn, when the little valley became, for a brief season, a glorious study for a landscapepainter.

II.

Arrival at the Val Sainte Véronique - Plans for the Employment of Time Paternal Education Companionship between Father and

Sad Associations.

WHEN

THEN we came to the place - my boy and I— after the lamentable events of the war, it had not this temporary splendor, but was gray under a gray and rainy sky; and it seemed better so, more in unison with the sadness of our hearts. Our first visit was to the chapel, which, when we had last stayed here, my wife had decorated with some delicate needle-work of her own; and here, as we knelt together, my boy and I had leisure to feel both the nearness of our lost ones and their remoteness. We chose two rooms that communicated with each other, and, before evening, had given them an appearance of tolerable comfort. This

4

November-Employment of Time.

can never be very difficult in a place where firewood is inexhaustibly abundant. Logs were heaped on the old rusty fire-dogs, and the most cheerful beams illuminated the red-brick floor and the naked, inhospitable walls. That night the good fire sufficed for us, but the next day we busied ourselves very actively in furnishing our little apartment with the least inconvenient of the old things that were scattered about the mansion. This activity was beneficial to both of us, and I was pleased to see how Alexis suddenly regained his boyish cheerfulness in the toils of this novel occupation. Far from endeavoring to repress this happy elasticity of youth, I did my best to sustain and encourage it, for there is gloom enough between infancy and age without adding anything to it by the wilful refusal of whatever gleams of sunshine may be permitted to us.

We passed a whole day in arranging the two rooms that were to be, in an especial sense, our home, and gradually they came to wear a pleasant and familiar aspect, as we unpacked our luggage and surrounded ourselves with our little personal belongings. We set up some book-shelves, and a rack for my pipes, and another for our fowling-pieces; we hung up, with a melancholy satisfaction, the photographs of those who would come to us no more. The juxtaposition of these details is typical of what was going forward all the time in our innermost thoughts, for whilst we were busy about our things the images of the beloved ones were always near, always ready to rise vividly in the imagination.

I had not come to the Val Sainte Véronique with