friendship and of Benedictine patience. What profound knowledge of
the old feudal spirit is to be seen in the motto of the
Beauseants, _Pulchre sedens, melius agens_; in that of the
Espards, _Des partem leonis_; in that of the Vandenesses, _Ne se
vend_. And what elegance in the thousand details of the learned
symbolism which will always show how far accuracy has been carried
in my work, to which you, the poet, have contributed.

Your old friend,
DE BALZAC.




THE MUSE OF THE DEPARTMENT




On the skirts of Le Berry stands a town which, watered by the Loire,
infallibly attracts the traveler's eye. Sancerre crowns the topmost
height of a chain of hills, the last of the range that gives variety
to the Nivernais. The Loire floods the flats at the foot of these
slopes, leaving a yellow alluvium that is extremely fertile, excepting
in those places where it has deluged them with sand and destroyed them
forever, by one of those terrible risings which are also incidental to
the Vistula--the Loire of the northern coast.

The hill on which the houses of Sancerre are grouped is so far from
the river that the little river-port of Saint-Thibault thrives on the