nurse.






A SANCTUARY OF TREES





The Baron d'Azan was old--older even than his seventy years. His
age showed by contrast as he walked among his trees. They were
fresh and flourishing, full of sap and vigor, though many of them
had been born long before him.

The tracts of forest which still belonged to his diminished estate
were crowded with the growths native to the foot-hills of the
Ardennes. In the park around the small chateau, built in a Belgian
version of the First Empire style, trees from many lands had been
assembled by his father and grandfather: drooping spruces from
Norway, dark-pillared cypresses from Italy, spreading cedars from
Lebanon, trees of heaven from China, fern-leaved gingkos from Japan,
lofty tulip-trees and liquidambars from America, and fantastic
sylvan forms from islands of the Southern Ocean. But the royal
avenue of beeches! Well, I must tell you more about that, else you
can never feel the meaning of this story.