The four gates, called the gate of Conches, the gate of Avonne, the gate of Blangy, and the gate of the Avenue, showed the styles of the different periods at which they were constructed so admirably that a brief description, in the interest of archaeologists, will presently be given, as brief as the one Blondet has already written about the gate of the Avenue.
After eight days of strolling about with the countess, the illustrious editor of the "Journal des Debats" knew by heart the Chinese kiosk, the bridges, the isles, the hermitage, the dairy, the ruined temple, the Babylonian ice-house, and all the other delusions invented by landscape architects which some nine hundred acres of land can be made to serve.
He now wished to find the sources of the Avonne, which the general and the countess daily extolled in the evening, making plans to visit them which were daily forgotten the next morning.

Above Les Aigues the Avonne really had the appearance of an alpine torrent.

Sometimes it hollowed a bed among the rocks, sometimes it went underground; on this side the brooks came down in cascades, there they flowed like the Loire on sandy shallows where rafts could not pass on account of the shifting channels.
Blondet took a short cut through the labyrinths of the park to reach the gate of Conches.

This gate demands a few words, which give, moreover, certain historical details about the property.
The original founder of Les Aigues was a younger son of the Soulanges family, enriched by marriage, whose chief ambition was to make his elder brother jealous,--a sentiment, by the bye, to which we owe the fairy-land of Isola Bella in the Lago Maggiore.

In the middle ages the castle of Les Aigues stood on the banks of the Avonne.