and west. Behind the salon on the west side I have a double room which
serves as dining and breakfast-room, with a guest-chamber above. The
kitchen, at the north side of the salon, has its own gable, and there is
an old stable extending forward at the north side, and an old grange
extending west from the dining-room. It is a jumble of roofs and
chimneys, and looks very much like the houses I used to combine from my
Noah's Ark box in the days of my babyhood.

All the rooms on the ground floor are paved in red tiles, and the
staircase is built right in the salon. The ceilings are raftered. The
cross-beam in the salon fills my soul with joy--it is over a foot wide
and a foot and a half thick. The walls and the rafters are painted
green,--my color,--and so good, by long trial, for my eyes and my
nerves, and my disposition.

But much as I like all this, it was not this that attracted me here.
That was the situation. The house stands in a small garden, separated
from the road by an old gnarled hedge of hazel. It is almost on the
crest of the hill on the south bank of the Marne,--the hill that is the
water-shed between the Marne and the Grand Morin. Just here the Marne
makes a wonderful loop, and is only fifteen minutes walk away from my
gate, down the hill to the north.

From the lawn, on the north side of the house, I command a panorama
which I have rarely seen equaled. To me it is more beautiful than that
we have so often looked at together from the terrace at Saint-Germain.
In the west the new part of Esbly climbs the hill, and from there to a
hill at the northeast I have a wide view of the valley of the Marne,
backed by a low line of hills which is the water-shed between the Marne
and the Aisne. Low down in the valley, at the northwest, lies lie de