cathedral, the choir being formed of the main building of the house
seen at the end of it. When the setting sun casts its orange tones
mingled with amber upon the casements of the chateau, the effect is
that of painted windows. At the other end of the canal we see Blangy,
the county-town, containing about sixty houses, and the village
church, which is nothing more than a tumble-down building with a
wooden clock-tower which appears to hold up a roof of broken tiles.
One comfortable house and the parsonage are distinguishable; but the
township is a large one,--about two hundred scattered houses in all,
those of the village forming as it were the capital. The roads are
lined with fruit-trees, and numerous little gardens are strewn here
and there,--true country gardens with everything in them; flowers,
onions, cabbages and grapevines, currants, and a great deal of manure.
The village has a primitive air; it is rustic, and has that decorative
simplicity which we artists are forever seeking. In the far distance
is the little town of Soulanges overhanging a vast sheet of water,
like the buildings on the lake of Thune.

When you stroll in the park, which has four gates, each superb in
style, you feel that our mythological Arcadias are flat and stale.
Arcadia is in Burgundy, not in Greece; Arcadia is at Les Aigues and
nowhere else. A river, made by scores of brooklets, crosses the park
at its lower level with a serpentine movement; giving a dewy freshness
and tranquillity to the scene,--an air of solitude, which reminds one
of a convent of Carthusians, and all the more because, on an
artificial island in the river, is a hermitage in ruins, the interior
elegance of which is worthy of the luxurious financier who constructed
it. Les Aigues, my dear Nathan, once belonged to that Bouret who spent
two millions to receive Louis XV. on a single occasion under his roof.
How many ardent passions, how many distinguished minds, how many