No matter where you are in the country, however solitary you may think yourself, you are certain to be the focus of the two eyes of a country bumpkin; a laborer rests on his hoe, a vine-dresser straightens his bent back, a little goat-girl, or shepherdess, or milkmaid climbs a willow to stare at you.
Presently the avenue merges into an alley of acacias, which leads to an iron railing made in the days when iron-workers fashioned those slender filagrees which are not unlike the copies set us by a writing-master.

On either side of the railing is a ha-ha, the edges of which bristle with angry spikes,--regular porcupines in metal.

The railing is closed at both ends by two porter's-lodges, like those of the palace at Versailles, and the gateway is surmounted by colossal vases.

The gold of the arabesques is ruddy, for rust has added its tints, but this entrance, called "the gate of the Avenue," which plainly shows the hand of the Great Dauphin (to whom, indeed, Les Aigues owes it), seems to me none the less beautiful for that.

At the end of each ha-ha the walls of the park, built of rough-hewn stone, begin.