market town, driving herself in her high gig, and several times I have
seen some of them coming home with a cow tied to their wagon behind,
which they had bought at the market. They were always pleased to see
us, delighted to show anything we wanted to see, offered us
refreshment--bread and cheese, milk and wine--but never came to see me
at the château. I made the round of all the châteaux with Mme. A. to
make acquaintance with the neighbours. They were all rather far off,
but I loved the long drives, almost always through the forest, which
was quite beautiful in all seasons, changing like the sea. It was
delightful in midsummer, the branches of the big trees almost meeting
over our heads, making a perfect shade, and the long, straight, green
alleys stretching away before us, as far as we could see. When the
wood was a little less thick, the afternoon sun would make long
zigzags of light through the trees and trace curious patterns upon the
hard white road when we emerged occasionally for a few minutes from
the depths of the forest at a cross-road. It was perfectly still, but
summer stillness, when one hears the buzzing and fluttering wings of
small birds and insects, and is conscious of life around one.

The most beautiful time for the forest is, of course, in the autumn.
October and November are lovely months, with the changing foliage, the
red and yellow almost as vivid as in America, and always a foreground
of moss and brown ferns, which grow very thick and high all through
the forest. We used to drive sometimes over a thick carpet of red and
yellow leaves, hardly hearing the horses' hoofs or the noise of the
wheels, and when we turned our faces homeward toward the sunset there
was really a glory of colour in wood and sky. It was always curiously
lonely--we rarely met anything or anyone, occasionally a group of
wood-cutters or boys exercising dogs and horses from the
hunting-stables of Villers-Cotterets. At long intervals we would come