Madame de Stael was born and lived during many years of her life.
We had wandered through the shaded walks of the magnificent chateau
garden, and strolled along the terrace where the eloquent Corinne
had walked with the Schlegels and other famous habitues of her
salon. We had visited Calvin's house at 11 Rue des Chanoines,
Rousseau's at No. 40 on the Grande Rue, and Voltaire's at Ferney.

And so we had been living the past, Salemina and I. But


"Early one morning,
Just as the day was dawning."


my slumbering conscience rose in Puritan strength and asserted its
rights to a hearing.

"Salemina," said I, as I walked into her room, "this life that we
are leading will not do for me any longer. I have been too much
immersed in ruins. Last night in writing to a friend in New York I
uttered the most disloyal and incendiary statements. I said that I
would rather die than live without ruins of some kind; that America
was so new, and crude, and spick and span, that it was obnoxious to
any aesthetic soul; that our tendency to erect hideous public
buildings and then keep them in repair afterwards would make us the
butt of ridicule among future generations. I even proposed the
founding of an American Ruin Company, Limited,--in which the
stockholders should purchase favourably situated bits of land and
erect picturesque ruins thereon. To be sure, I said, these ruins
wouldn't have any associations at first, but what of that? We have