CHAPTER I.THE TRAVELLER.
During the first days of the month of September, 1832, a young man about thirty years of age was walking through one of the valleys in Lorraine originating in the Vosges mountains.

A little river which, after a few leagues of its course, flows into the Moselle, watered this wild basin shut in between two parallel lines of mountains.

The hills in the south became gradually lower and finally dwindled away into the plain.
Alongside the plateau, arranged in amphitheatres, large square fields stripped of their harvest lay here and there in the primitive forest; in other places, innumerable oaks and elms had been dethroned to give place to plantations of cherry-trees, whose symmetrical rows promised an abundant harvest.
This contest of nature with industry is everywhere, but is more pronounced in hilly countries.

The scene changed, however, as one penetrated farther, and little by little the influence of the soil gained ascendancy.

As the hills grew nearer together, enclosing the valley in a closer embrace, the clearings gave way to the natural obduracy of the soil.