It was sufficing, and eventually transformed this gloomy retreat into the abode of harmony and peace.

We love to follow her into that solitude, when her mind was becoming tempered for her struggle, as we go to seek at Charmettes the still fresh and sparkling source of the life and genius of Jean Jacques Rousseau.
XII.
At the foot of the mountains of Beaujolais, in the large basin of the Saone, in face of the Alps, there is a series of small hills scattered like the sea sands, which the patient vine-dresser has planted with vines, and which form amongst themselves, at their base, oblique valleys, narrow and sinuous ravines, interspersed with small verdant meads.

These meadows have each their thread of water, which filters down from the mountains: willows, weeping birch, and poplars, show the course and conceal the bed of the streams.

The sides and tops of these hills only bear above the lowly vines a few wild peach trees, which do not shade the grapes and large walnut trees in the orchards near the houses.
On the declivity of one of these sandy protuberances was _La Platiere_, the paternal inheritance of M.Roland, a low farm-house, with regular windows, covered with a roof of red tiles nearly flat; the eaves of this roof project a little beyond the wall, in order to protect the windows from the rain of winter and the summer's sun.

The walls, straight and wholly unornamented, were covered with a coating of white plaister, which time had soiled and cracked.