sportsman nor an agriculturalist) is the early morning. Between the
hours of waking and breakfasting, the women of the family are sleeping
or dressing, and therefore unapproachable; the master of the house is
out and about on his own affairs; a Parisian is therefore compelled to
be alone from eight to eleven o'clock, the hour chosen in all
country-houses for breakfast. Now, having got what amusement he can out
of carefully dressing himself, he has soon exhausted that resource.
Then, perhaps, he has brought with him some work, which he finds it
impossible to do, and which goes back untouched, after he sees the
difficulties of doing it, into his valise; a writer is then obliged to
wander about the park and gape at nothing or count the big trees. The
easier the life, the more irksome such occupations are,--unless,
indeed, one belongs to the sect of shaking quakers or to the honorable
guild of carpenters or taxidermists. If one really had, like the
owners of estates, to live in the country, it would be well to supply
one's self with a geological, mineralogical, entomological, or
botanical hobby; but a sensible man doesn't give himself a vice merely
to kill time for a fortnight. The noblest estate, and the finest
chateaux soon pall on those who possess nothing but the sight of them.
The beauties of nature seem rather squalid compared to the
representation of them at the opera. Paris, by retrospection, shines
from all its facets. Unless some particular interest attaches us, as
it did in Blondet's case, to scenes honored by the steps and lighted
by the eyes of a certain person, one would envy the birds their wings
and long to get back to the endless, exciting scenes of Paris and its
harrowing strifes.

The long letter of the young journalist must make most intelligent
minds suppose that he had reached, morally and physically, that
particular phase of satisfied passions and comfortable happiness which