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 Abbé — Our Dinner-table — The Abbé sees a Ghost Alexis turns Sportsman- What Alexis learned during the Sylvan Year - Conclusion.

HERE

ERE, 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. Véronique 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. '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 study of Nature has been good for me, and it

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October My Schemes.

:

is agreeable to have renewed or increased one's acquaintance with the sylvan world. My plans for doing something in science, and art, and literary study, were larger than my powers of realization in so limited a space of time: however, they have constantly and not unprofitably occupied me. The paternal scheme, with reference to Alexis, has been farther from any perfect realization than the others. I had counted upon his companionship in my pursuits, and hoped that I might be able to teach him a good deal without his suspecting that he was being instructed; but he very soon found this out, and by calling every thing a lesson compelled me to fix regular hours for study, exactly as if we had been master and pupil at a school in fact, he called them school-hours,' and asked for his liberty at other times, or took it. He had full holiday on Thursday and Saturday, on which days I was in no danger of being disturbed by him, for he never made his appearance, but went great distances on foot with my keeper (who had been known as a famous poacher under the nickname of the Weasel'). In a word, I discovered that my didactic propensities must be greatly restrained if I did not wish to frighten this young bird away into the woods altogether. On the other hand, it was impossible to suspend his education for twelve months. In this perplexity I took a neighbor (who lived ten miles off) into my confidence, and he recommended a private tutor for the young gentleman. The plan seemed feasible, and the more so that there were so many spare rooms at the Val Ste. Véronique : so one

day a young abbé arrived, who knew, I suppose, what every abbé knows, but who was utterly incapable of conversation, and replied always in monosyllables, with a modesty that was perfectly irritating. My dinner-table had been tolerable with Alexis, when I did not put him out of humor by attempting to convey instruction to his mind; but it was not tolerable with the abbé, and the long spaces of silence must have been as uncomfortable to him as to me, for he made a request that he might be served in his own apartments, a relief both to him and me. He had not been accustomed, however, to solitude, so that the silence of the big house, where we never heard any thing but the whistling of the wind, or the cry of a bird or wild animal in the forest, ended by preying upon his mind; and one day, pale with terror, he declared he had seen a ghost, and announced his sudden departure. From a malicious look of Alexis, I suspected that he knew more about the ghost than he chose to tell; however, the abbé left us with an unearthly expression on his otherwise not very interesting physiognomy, and when he was gone I attempted to resume my former office of pedagogue. My young pupil, however, affirmed that it was now the long vacation, when nobody learned any thing; and no sooner had the shooting season begun than he got himself invited to a château twenty miles off, where, with a merry party of young gentlemen, he did nothing but shoot from morning till night. I was vexed with him at first for his indifference to learning, his insensibility to the melancholy events which had happened in our family,

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October-Conclusion.

and his pleasure in escaping from my own paternal society; but a little reflection soon set me right on these points. His was not the age when learning of any kind is a solace or a pleasure, nor does the fortunate elasticity of youth accept any bereavement, however terrible, as a sufficient reason for perpetual sadness; whilst as to the charms of my own society. I quite understood that a lad, who for nine months had sat at table opposite to a grave old face like mine, might wish to see younger faces and merrier. However, I confess that what Alexis learned during our time at the Val Ste. Véronique was not of a very intellectual nature. He picked up a good deal of natural history from the keeper, and acquired something of the knowledge which distinguishes Red Indians, at least in Cooper's novels; and he educated his legs, for he became an excellent pedestrian. All this is excellent in its way; but another year of our wood-life would turn the boy into a half-savage, and unfit him for any other society than that of his dear friend, the Weasel. So our experiment of sylvan retirement is not likely to be repeated, except for briefer spaces. We may, in the future, permit ourselves the enjoyment of sylvan weeks or months; but this long stay in the Val Ste. Véronique will remain alone in our memory as - THE SYLVAN YEAR.

INDEX TO "SYLVAN YEAR."

Boar, the domesticated, 25; the wild, Cherry-trees, wild, their change of color

Bonheur, Auguste, his painting of south-Cherville, Marquis de, his observation of