fault!), I solicited a mission. The council-general of the department of
---- had lately, and quite opportunely, expressed officially the wish that
a certain ruined abbey, called Rozel Abbey, should be classed among
historical monuments. I have been commissioned to investigate closely the
candidate's titles. I hastened with all possible speed to the chief town
of this artistic department, where I effected my entrance with the
important gravity of a man who holds within his hands the life or the
death of a monument dear to the country. I made some inquiries at the
hotel; great was my mortification when I discovered that no one seemed to
suspect that such a thing as Rozel Abbey existed within a circuit of a
hundred leagues. I called at the prefecture while still laboring under the
effect of this disappointment; the prefect, Valton, whom you know very
well, received me with his usual affability; but to the questions I
addressed him on the subject of the condition of the ruins which the
council seemed so desirous of preserving for the admiration of its
constituents, he replied with an absent smile, that his wife, who had
visited these ruins on the occasion of an excursion into the country,
while she was sojourning on the sea shore, could tell me a great deal more
about the ruins than he possibly could himself.

He invited me to dinner, and in the evening, Madame Valton, after the
usual struggles of expiring modesty, showed me, in her album, some
views of the famous ruins sketched with considerable taste. She became
mildly excited while speaking to me of these venerable remains, situated,
if she is to be believed, in the midst of an enchanting site, and, above
all, particularly well suited for picnics and country excursions. A
beseeching and corrupting look terminated her harangue. It seems
evident to me that this worthy lady is the only person in the department
who takes any real interest in that poor old abbey, and that the
conscript fathers of the general council have passed their resolution