We will begin from the East — that’s the simplest way. For you the sun of life has hardly risen; its first rays are still making your blue eyes blink, your blue eyes that reflect the heavens. Then moving towards the South a little, we will go and see the charming Château of Villers-Hellon where I played as a child, seeking amidst the tree-clumps and through the green hedges those living flowers our games scattered hither and thither and which were called Louise, Augustine, Caroline, Henriette and Hermine. Alas, to-day two or three of these fair supple stalks have been broken by the wind of death; the others are mothers and some are grandmothers. All this was forty years ago, dear boy, and it is not till twenty long years hence you will know what forty means.

  Continuing our course we go through Lorcy. Do you see that steep slope sprinkled with apple-trees which shoots its base into yonder pond with its green water and green weeds. One day three young fellows who had been run away with in a shay by a horse, gone imbecile or crazy (it was never precisely known which) were rolling down like an avalanche headlong into these abysmal depths! By a lucky chance one of the wheels caught against an apple-tree, which was almost torn up by the roots! Two of the three men were flung over the horse’s head! The other, like Absalom, remained hanging to a branch — not by his hair, although his hair would have done very well for the purpose — but by his hand! The two young fellows who were thrown over the horse’s head were my cousins Hippolyte Leury, of whom you have heard me speak sometimes, and the other my friend Adolphe de Leuven, of whom you are always hearing me speak; the third was myself.

  What would have happened to my life and consequently to yours, my poor child, if that apple-tree had not been there just in the right place to stop us?

  About half a league further on as we travel from east to south we should come upon a large farm-house. Ah, there it is, its main-building covered with red tiles and its outhouses with thatch. Its name is Vouty.

  There still lives, at least I hope so (though he must be more than eighty years old nowadays), a man who has been to my moral life — if I may so put it — what that good apple-tree which I spoke of a moment ago and which stopped our shay, was to my material life. Have a look through my “Memoirs “and you will find his name; it is that old friend of my father’s who came into our house one day on his return from shooting with one half of his left hand blown away by the bursting of his gun. When the wild desire seized upon me to leave Villers-Cotterets and to come to Paris, instead of putting leading-strings to my shoulders and fetters round my legs, he said to me: “Go! Fate is urging you,” and he gave me that famous letter of introduction to General Foy which opened to me the general’s house and the offices of the Duc d’Orléans.

  We shall give this dear old man a hasty embrace; for we owe him much. Then we shall continue our journey along a broad road which will take us to the top of a big hill.

  From this hill-top behold yonder valley and river and town. They are the valley and river of Ourcq; the town La Ferté-Milon, where Racine was born.

  We need not go down the hill and enter the town; nobody could show us the house which was inhabited by the rival of Corneille, the ungrateful friend of Molière, the poet who was sent away in disgrace by Louis XIV.

  His works are in every library; his statue — the work of our great sculptor David — stands in the public square; but his house is nowhere — or rather the whole town that owes its fame to him is his house.

  At any rate we know that Racine was born at La Ferté-Milon, whereas we do not know where Homer was born.

  And now we are walking from the south to the west. That pretty village which seems to have just run out of the forest to come and warm itself in the sunshine is Boursonne. Do you remember “La Comtesse de Charny,” one of my books that you like the best, dear lad? Well then, the name of Boursonne must be familiar to you. Yonder little Château inhabited by my old friend Hutin is Widow Charny’s; thence the young gallant used to issue secretly at night leaning over the neck of his English horse, and in a few minutes he was on the other side of the forest, under the shade cast by yonder poplars. Thence he could see Catherine’s window open and shut. One night he came back streaming with blood; one of old Billot’s balls had gone through his arm; another had ripped up his side. Finally one day he went out never to return. He was going to escort the king to Montmédy and was left lying on the public square of Varennes opposite the house of Sausse the grocer.

  We have now crossed the forest from south to west, passing through Plessy-au-Bois, La Chapelle-aux-Auvergnats and Coyolles; a few steps more and we are at the top of the hill of Vauciennes.

  It was a hundred yards behind where we stand that one day, or rather one night, on my way back from Crépy, I found the dead body of a lad of sixteen. I have related this grim and mysterious drama in my “Memoirs.” The windmill which rises on the left of the road and which turns its great wings so slowly and so sadly, it alone — and God — knows how things happened there. Both remained voiceless. Man’s justice struck at hap-hazard. Fortunately the murderer confessed at his death that it had struck true.

  The watershed which we are going to follow and which commands that great plain on our right, and that beautiful valley on our left, is the scene of my hunting exploits. There I made my first essay in the Nimrod and Levaillant line. (I hear these are the two greatest huntsmen of ancient and modern times.) On my right was the realm of hares, partridges and quails; on my left that of wild duck, teal and snipe. Do you see that place which is greener than the rest and which looks like a delightful bit of green sward painted by Watteau? It is a peat-bog where I came very near to losing my life.

  I was gently and gradually sinking down into it, when fortunately I bethought me of slipping my gun between my legs; the butt on one side, the muzzle on the other, met rather solider ground than that wherein I was beginning to sink; I stopped myself in this vertical plunge which could not have failed to take me right to the regions below. I shouted. The miller of the mill you see yonder, standing beside the sluice of that great pond, ran towards me on hearing my cries. He flung me the leash of his dog; I caught hold of it. I was saved. As for my gun, of which I was very fond, and which killed at a long distance, I had but to squeeze my legs together, and it was saved along with me — which was a good thing, as I was not rich enough to have bought another.

  Let us continue our journey. We are now going from the West towards the North. That ruin yonder, of which a fragment stands up like the Keep of Vincennes, is the tower of Vez, the only relic of an ancient feudal manor long since vanished and gone by. The tower is the spectre in granite of passed ages; it belongs to my friend Paillet. You remember that kindly head clerk who used to accompany me on shooting expeditions from Crépy to Paris, and whose horse, whenever we saw a garde champêtre or private individual, had the kindly habit of carrying off the sportsman, his gun, his hares, his partridges and his quails, whilst the other shooter like an inoSensive tourist walked about with his hands in his pockets, admiring the landscape and studying botany.

  Yonder country house is the Château des Fossés. There my earliest sensations made themselves known; from there my earliest recollections date. It was at Les Fossés that I beheld my father coming out of the water from which, with the help of Hippolyte — that intelligent blackamoor who for fear of frost used to fling away the flowers and bring in the flowerpots under shelter — he had just dragged three drowning lads. The one of the three whom my father had saved was called Dupuy; that is the only name I remember. Hippolyte, an excellent swimmer, had saved the two others. There lived Moquet the garde champêtre who had been nightmared, and who set a trap on his chest to catch old mother Durand, and Pierre the gardener who used to take his spade and cut the snakes in two, from whose insides live frogs would sally forth; there too flourished and waxed in years and honour old Truff, a quadruped not classed by Monsieur de Buffon, half dog, half bear, on whose back they used to perch me straddle-legged, there to take my first lessons in equitation.

  And now towards the North-West there is Haramont, a delightful village lost in the midst of its apple-trees, right in the centre of a clearing in the forest and made illustrious by the birth of honest Ange Pitou, the nephew of Aunt Angélique, the pupil of the Abbé Fortier, the fellow pupil of young Gilbert and the companion-in-arms of the patriot Billot. This claim to distinction — which is disputed by some people, who maintain (rightly enough perhaps) that Pitou never existed except in my imagination — being the only one that Haramont can boast of, let us continue our journey to the double pond between the Campiègne and the Vivières roads near which I received Boudoux’s hospitality on the day I ran away from my mother’s house in order to avoid going to the school at Soissons. Had I gone there, I should probably have been killed two or three years afterwards by the blowing up of the powder magazine, as some of my young comrades were.

  Come to the middle of this wide alley which runs north and south. Half a league behind us lies the massive Donjon built by François I. and on which the hero of Marignan and Pavia set his salamander seal, and in front of us on the horizon a high hill covered with whin and fern. One of the most terrible of my youthful memories is connected with this hill. One winter’s night when the snow had stretched its white carpet over this long wide alley, I observed that I was being followed silently by a beast twenty yards away. It was the size of a big dog, its eyes shone like two live coals.

  I did. not need to look twice at the brute to recognize it. It was an enormous wolf. If I had only had my gun or my carbine or only a bit of tinder and a flint! But I had not even a pistol, a big knife or a pen-knife. Fortunately I had been a sportsman for five years, though I was only fifteen at the time, and knew the ways of the night-prowler with whom I had to deal. I knew that so long as I should remain on my feet and did not run I had nothing to fear. But look, my boy, the hillside is all pitted with quagmires. I might fall into one of these, and then the wolf would be on me with one bound, and we should have to see which had the better claws and teeth.

  My heart beat violently; but I began to sing. At all times I have sung abominably out of tune. Had the wolf been the least bit musical he would have fled. My wolf was not. On the contrary the music seemed to please him. He chimed in with a plaintive second on a lower note which was wonderfully suggestive of the pangs of hunger. I stopped singing, and went jogging on in silent horror like one of those damned souls whose neck Satan had twisted round, and whom Dante meets in the third circle of hell, walking forwards and looking backwards. But I soon perceived that I was doing an imprudent thing. While looking in the wolf’s direction I did not look at my feet. I stumbled; the wolf bounded forward. By good luck I did not fall down completely; but the wolf was only ten yards off now. For a few seconds my legs refused to move. In spite of ten degrees of cold the sweat was pouring from my brow. I stopped; the wolf stopped also. It took me five minutes to regain my strength. These five minutes seemed long apparently to my travelling companion: he sat down on his rump and uttered another howl — a still hungrier and more plaintive one than the first. That howl made me shiver to the marrow of my bones. I set out again, keeping my eyes on my feet, stopping each time that I wanted to see whether the wolf was following me, and whether he was getting nearer or keeping farther away. The wolf had started off at the same moment as I had, stopping when I stopped, walking when I walked, but always keeping as close as before — in fact rather coming closer than sheering farther off. At the end of a quarter of an hour he was only five yards from me. I was getting near the park, that is to say I was at that moment hardly a kilometre away from Villers-Cotterets; but my road was cut at this place by a wide ditch, that famous ditch which I jumped in order to give pretty Laurence from Paris an idea of my agility, and where I was so unlucky as to split my nankeen breeches which I had had made for my first communion — do you remember? I could easily have jumped that ditch and with more agility than on the day in question, I assure you; but in order to jump it I should have had to run and I knew that before I had got a quarter of the way I should have the wolf on my shoulders. I was therefore obliged to make a détour and to go through a turnstile. All that would have been nothing if the turnstile had not been situated in the shade cast by the great trees of the park. What was going to happen whilst I was under the trees? Would not the gloom have just the opposite effect on the wolf from what it had on me? It frightened me; would it not embolden him? The thicker the darkness, the better a wolf can see.

  However hesitation was impossible. I am not exaggerating when I say that there was not a hair of my head that had not its drop of sweat, not a thread of my shirt that was not soaked. As I passed through the turnstile I cast a glance behind me. The darkness was such that the wolf’s form had disappeared. One could only see two glowing coals of fire in the darkness. Once I had got through, I twisted the turnstile violently round; the noise it made frightened the wolf who paused for a second: but almost immediately he leapt so lightly over the stile that I did not hear the snow crackle under his paws. And there he was at the same distance from me. I made for the middle of the forest drive by the shortest cut. I found myself in the light again and I beheld not only those terrible eyes which made holes in the darkness with their flaming pupils, but my friend the wolf’s whole body. As I got nearer the town and his instinct warned him that I was going to escape from him he drew nearer. He was only three yards away from me and yet I neither heard the sound of his footsteps nor of his breathing. You would have said it was a beast of the imagination, a phantom wolf. Nevertheless I kept on my way. I crossed the tennis ground, I entered what is called the Parterre, a huge smooth and open lawn where I had no fear of quagmires. The wolf was so near me that if I had suddenly stopped he would have run his nose against my legs. I was dying with desire to stamp my feet, to clap my hands and swear loudly; but I did not dare. Had I dared to do so, without doubt he would have fled or at least for a moment have sheered off. I took ten minutes to cross the greensward and I reached the corner of the castle wall. Then the wolf stopped. He was hardly a hundred and fifty paces from the town. I continued walking as before without hastening my steps. He, as he had done before, sat down on his rump and watched me moving oil. When I was a hundred yards from him, he uttered a third howl still hungrier and more plaintive than the two others, which the fifty dogs of the Duc de Bourbon’s pack answered in one common voice. This howl was an expression of regret at not having been able to have a bite of my flesh. There was no mistaking that. I do not know whether he passed the night where he halted; for no sooner did I feel myself in safety than I set out at a furious run and arrived pale and half dead at my mother’s shop. You did not know my poor mother, or I should not need to tell you that she was more frightened by my story than I had been by the event. She undressed me, changed my shirt, aired my bed and put me in it as she used to do ten years before. Then she brought me a bowl of hot wine in my bed. As the fumes mounted into my head I felt twice as much remorse as before for not having essayed some of those doughty deeds which had been passing through my mind all the way home as a means of ridding myself of my enemy.

  And now, my boy, let me pause at this episode like a good story-teller. I could not tell you anything more exciting. Besides, the preface has been as long as it ought to be — and longer. Among all the stories I have told you ten times over, choose the one which I should tell the public. But choose well, you understand; for if you choose ill, it is not I so much as you who will be blamed, if folks are bored instead of being amused.

  “Well then, father, tell us the story of Catherine Blum.”

  “Is that the only one you really want?”

  “Yes! it is my favourite of them all.”

  “Good! then we will choose your favourite, my boy! “So I give you, dear readers one and all, the story of Catherine Blum. I can refuse my dear lad nothing, my blue-eyed laddie, and he has chosen this one.

  CHAPTER II.

  THE NEW HOUSE ON THE SOISSONS ROAD.

  RIGHT across the stretch of ground, the northeastern borders of the forest of Villers-Cotterets — a Bpace which we omitted to traverse, since we began our journey at the Château of Villers-Hellon and ended it at the hill of Vivières — stretches like a great undulating serpent the high road from Paris to Soissons.

  This road having crossed the forest for a mile to Gondreville and cut off a corner at the Croix-Blanche; having left the Crépy Road on its left and skirted the quarries of the Fontaine-Eau-Claire; having plunged into the valley of Vauciennes and come out again; having made straight for Villers-Cotterets, then leaves the town at the opposite extremity and goes at right angles to the foot of the hill of Dampleux, passing on one side the forest and on the other the plain where long ago stood the noble Abbey of Saint-Denis, amidst whose ruins I ran so gaily as a child and which to-day is only a pretty little country house with white walls, a slate roof, green shutters, lost amid flowers, apple-trees and the quivering leaves of aspens.

  Then it boldly enters the forest which it crosses in its whole width, emerging two leagues and a half farther on at the posting house called Vertefeuille.

  In all this distance only one house is met with, standing on the right side of the road; it was built in the time of Philippe-Egalité as a residence for a head-keeper. It was then named the Maison Neuve, and though seventy years have passed since it sprang up like a mushroom at the foot of the beeches and gigantic oaks which shelter it, like an old coquette who insists on being called by her Christian name, it clings to the juvenile name by which it was first known.

  Why not? Is not the Pont-Neuf, built in 1577, in the reign of Henry III. by the architect Ducerceau, still called the Pont-Neuf?

  Let us return to the Maison Neuve, which is the centre of the simple yet startling events we are about to relate, and let us make the reader acquainted with it by a detailed description.