We went there one morning early in May, at the hour when the forest is
peopled only by the deer, which bound and skip in its lonely paths. Now
and then a gamekeeper crosses the extremity of one of the avenues, like
a black speck on the horizon. We sat down under the seventh tree of the
semi-circle round the open space, looking towards the meadows of
Sevres. Centuries have been required to frame that sturdy oak, and to
bend its gnarled branches; its roots, swelling with sap to nourish and
support its trunk, have burst through the sod at its feet, and form a
moss-covered seat, of which the oak is the back, and its lower leaves
the natural canopy. The morning was as serene and transparent as the
waters of the sea at sunrise under the green headlands of the islands
of the Archipelago. The ardent rays of an almost summer sun fell from
the clear sky on the wooded hill, and then rose again from out of the
thickets in exhalations warm as the waves which expire in the shade
after having imbibed the sunshine. There was no other sound than that
of the fall of some dry leaves of the preceding winter, which, as the
sap rose and throbbed, fell at the foot of the tree, to make room for
the new and tender foliage.
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