beneath a cliff like a swarm of bees in the hollow of an old willow?
Wakened by the "hu! hu!" of the postilion as he walks beside his
horses, we shake off sleep and admire, like a dream within a dream,
the beautiful scene which is to the traveler what a noble passage in a
book is to a reader,--a brilliant thought of Nature. Such is the
sensation caused by a first sight of Nemours as we approach it from
Burgundy. We see it encircled with bare rocks, gray, black, white,
fantastic in shape like those we find in the forest of Fontainebleau;
from them spring scattered trees, clearly defined against the sky,
which give to this particular rock formation the dilapidated look of a
crumbling wall. Here ends the long wooded hill which creeps from
Nemours to Bouron, skirting the road. At the bottom of this irregular
ampitheater lie meadow-lands through which flows the Loing, forming
sheets of water with many falls. This delightful landscape, which
continues the whole way to Montargis, is like an opera scene, for its
effects really seem to have been studied.

One morning Doctor Minoret, who had been summoned into Burgundy by a
rich patient, was returning in all haste to Paris. Not having
mentioned at the last relay the route he intended to take, he was
brought without his knowledge through Nemours, and beheld once more,
on waking from a nap, the scenery in which his childhood had been
passed. He had lately lost many of his old friends. The votary of the
Encyclopedists had witnessed the conversion of La Harpe; he had buried
Lebrun-Pindare and Marie-Joseph de Chenier, and Morellet, and Madame
Helvetius. He assisted at the quasi-fall of Voltaire when assailed by
Geoffroy, the continuator of Freton. For some time past he had thought
of retiring, and so, when his post chaise stopped at the head of the
Grand'Rue of Nemours, his heart prompted him to inquire for his
family. Minoret-Levrault, the post master, came forward himself to see