fortifications to the Seine, just where the Avenue Bineau now runs.
Within the park walls there were fields and woods and orchards, and even
islands, the chief of which was called the "Ile de la Grande Jatte," and
the whole of one reach of the Seine, the whole within a quarter of an
hour's journey from Paris. This beautiful demesne, the favourite
residence of my father and mother, who had made it, and were always
adding new beauties to it, and who lived there in those days, far from
political cares, and surrounded by their many children, who were all
devoted to them, was also the place that we loved best. We were so near
town that our education, our masters, our lessons at home or in school,
went on just as if we were in Paris, while we had the advantage of fresh
air and country life, with all its liberty and its natural and
spontaneous exercise. At five o'clock in the morning, before lessons or
school began, we were galloping about in the big park. In play hours,
and on the Thursday and Sunday holidays, the whole troop of children
roamed the fields, almost unaccompanied, the older ones looking after
the youngest. We used to make hay, and get on the hay-cocks, and dig
potatoes, and climb the fruit-trees, and beat the walnut-trees. There
were flowers everywhere, fields of roses, where we gathered splendid
bouquets every day, without their ever being missed even. Then we used
to go boating and swimming. Boys and girls, equally good swimmers all,
would plunge in turn into the little arm of the Seine enclosed within
the park, and nothing more delicious can be imagined than to cast
oneself into deep water near the bridge at Neuilly, and to let oneself
drift down almost as far as Asnieres, under the great willows, returning
afterwards on foot by the "Ile de la Grande Jatte."

This island, laid waste now and turned into a slum, was covered then
with venerable trees, and intersected by those "shady paths" sung by
Gounod, in which we loved to lose ourselves in all the carelessness of