wood, and nothing more--a dense, wild wood, that covered many hundreds
of acres, and sheltered many thousands of wild live things. Though
mysteriously deep in the middle, this famous pond (which may have been
centuries old, and still exists) was not large; you might almost fling a
stone across it anywhere.

[Illustration]

Bounded on three sides by the forest (now shorn away), it was just
hidden from the dusty road by a fringe of trees; and one could have it
all to one's self, except on Sunday and Thursday afternoons, when a few
love-sick Parisians remembered its existence, and in its loveliness
forgot their own.

To be there at all was to be happy; for not only was it quite the most
secluded, picturesque, and beautiful pond in all the habitable
globe--that pond of ponds, the _only_ pond--but it teemed with a far
greater number and variety of wonderful insects and reptiles than any
other pond in the world. Such, at least, I believed must be the case,
for they were endless.

To watch these creatures, to learn their ways, to catch them (which we
sometimes did), to take them home and be kind to them, and try to tame
them, and teach them our ways (with never varying non-success, it is
true, but in, oh, such jolly company!) became a hobby that lasted me, on
and off, for seven years.

La Mare d'Auteuil! The very name has a magic, from all the associations
that gathered round it during that time, to cling forever.