My dear Nathan,--You, who provide the public with such delightful
dreams through the magic of your imagination, are now to follow me
while I make you dream a dream of truth. You shall then tell me
whether the present century is likely to bequeath such dreams to the
Nathans and the Blondets of the year 1923; you shall estimate the
distance at which we now are from the days when the Florines of the
eighteenth century found, on awaking, a chateau like Les Aigues in the
terms of their bargain.

My dear fellow, if you receive this letter in the morning, let your
mind travel, as you lie in bed, fifty leagues or thereabouts from
Paris, along the great mail road which leads to the confines of
Burgundy, and behold two small lodges built of red brick, joined, or
separated, by a rail painted green. It was there that the diligence
deposited your friend and correspondent.

On either side of this double pavilion grows a quick-set hedge, from
which the brambles straggle like stray locks of hair. Here and there a
tree shoots boldly up; flowers bloom on the slopes of the wayside
ditch, bathing their feet in its green and sluggish water. The hedge
at both ends meets and joins two strips of woodland, and the double
meadow thus inclosed is doubtless the result of a clearing.

These dusty and deserted lodges give entrance to a magnificent avenue
of centennial elms, whose umbrageous heads lean toward each other and
form a long and most majestic arbor. The grass grows in this avenue,
and only a few wheel-tracks can be seen along its double width of way.
The great age of the trees, the breadth of the avenue, the venerable
construction of the lodges, the brown tints of their stone courses,