the styles of the different periods at which they were constructed so
admirably that a brief description, in the interest of archaeologists,
will presently be given, as brief as the one Blondet has already
written about the gate of the Avenue.

After eight days of strolling about with the countess, the illustrious
editor of the "Journal des Debats" knew by heart the Chinese kiosk,
the bridges, the isles, the hermitage, the dairy, the ruined temple,
the Babylonian ice-house, and all the other delusions invented by
landscape architects which some nine hundred acres of land can be made
to serve. He now wished to find the sources of the Avonne, which the
general and the countess daily extolled in the evening, making plans
to visit them which were daily forgotten the next morning. Above Les
Aigues the Avonne really had the appearance of an alpine torrent.
Sometimes it hollowed a bed among the rocks, sometimes it went
underground; on this side the brooks came down in cascades, there they
flowed like the Loire on sandy shallows where rafts could not pass on
account of the shifting channels. Blondet took a short cut through the
labyrinths of the park to reach the gate of Conches. This gate demands
a few words, which give, moreover, certain historical details about
the property.

The original founder of Les Aigues was a younger son of the Soulanges
family, enriched by marriage, whose chief ambition was to make his
elder brother jealous,--a sentiment, by the bye, to which we owe the
fairy-land of Isola Bella in the Lago Maggiore. In the middle ages the
castle of Les Aigues stood on the banks of the Avonne. Of this old
building nothing remains but the gateway, which has a porch like the
entrance to a fortified town, flanked by two round towers with conical
roofs. Above the arch of the porch are heavy stone courses, now draped