With what perfection do all women, even the most guileless, understand the arrangement of a scenic effect?
The movements of the servants, who were preparing to serve breakfast, showed me that the meal had been delayed until after the arrival of the diligence.

She had not ventured to come to meet me.
Is this not our dream,--the dream of all lovers of the beautiful, under whatsoever form it comes; the seraphic beauty that Luini put into his Marriage of the Virgin, that noble fresco at Sarono; the beauty that Rubens grasped in the tumult of his "Battle of the Thermodon"; the beauty that five centuries have elaborated in the cathedrals of Seville and Milan; the beauty of the Saracens at Granada, the beauty of Louis XIV.

at Versailles, the beauty of the Alps, and that of this Limagne in which I stand?
Belonging to the estate, about which there is nothing too princely, nor yet too financial, where prince and farmer-general have both lived (which fact serves to explain it), are four thousand acres of woodland, a park of some nine hundred acres, the mill, three leased farms, another immense farm at Conches, and vineyards,--the whole producing a revenue of about seventy thousand francs a year.

Now you know Les Aigues, my dear fellow; where I have been expected for the last two weeks, and where I am at this moment, in the chintz-lined chamber assigned to dearest friends.
Above the park, towards Conches, a dozen little brooks, clear, limpid streams coming from the Morvan, fall into the pond, after adorning with their silvery ribbons the valleys of the park and the magnificent gardens around the chateau.

The name of the place, Les Aigues, comes from these charming streams of water; the estate was originally called in the old title-deeds "Les Aigues-Vives" to distinguish it from "Aigues-Mortes"; but the word "Vives" has now been dropped.