Between the Seine and the little river Loing lies a wide flat country,
skirted on the one side by the Forest of Fontainebleau, and marked out
as to its southern limits by the towns of Moret, Montereau, and
Nemours. It is a dreary country; little knolls of hills appear only at
rare intervals, and a coppice here and there among the fields affords
for game; and beyond, upon every side, stretches the endless gray or
yellowish horizon peculiar to Beauce, Sologne, and Berri.

In the very centre of the plain, at equal distances from Moret and
Montereau, the traveler passes the old chateau of Saint-Lange,
standing amid surroundings which lack neither dignity nor stateliness.
There are magnificent avenues of elm-trees, great gardens encircled by
the moat, and a circumference of walls about a huge manorial pile
which represents the profits of the _maltote_, the gains of
farmers-general, legalized malversation, or the vast fortunes of great
houses now brought low beneath the hammer of the Civil Code.

Should any artist or dreamer of dreams chance to stray along the roads
full of deep ruts, or over the heavy land which secures the place
against intrusion, he will wonder how it happened that this romantic
old place was set down in a savanna of corn-land, a desert of chalk,
and sand, and marl, where gaiety dies away, and melancholy is a
natural product of the soil. The voiceless solitude, the monotonous
horizon line which weigh upon the spirits are negative beauties, which
only suit with sorrow that refuses to be comforted.

Hither, at the close of the year 1820, came a woman, still young, well
known in Paris for her charm, her fair face, and her wit; and to the
immense astonishment of the little village a mile away, this woman of
high rank and corresponding fortune took up her abode at Saint-Lange.