Spring at Villers-Cotterets—Whitsuntide—The Abbé Grégoire invites me to dance with his niece—Red books—The Chevalier de Faublas—Laurence and Vittoria—A dandy of 1818.
"O youth! springtime of life! O spring! youth of the year!" So said Metastasio.
We have now reached the beginning of May 1818, and I should be sixteen in the month of July.
The month of May, the favourite month of the year, which is abundant in beauty and in promise everywhere, is even more beautiful and resplendent at Villers-Cotterets than anywhere else.
It is difficult to form any idea of what that fine park was like at that epoch of time and at that season of the year: my heart still mourns because of the order for its destruction given by Louis-Philippe.
The park was simple and yet great in its design. Two splendid stretches of grass—rather longer than they were broad—were attached like two wings to the immense Castle which overlooked the green sward: one end touched the Castle walls, and the other joined two avenues of gigantic Spanish chestnut trees, which first formed laterally the two sides of a great square, then approached one another diagonally till they nearly met, then continued right out of sight, leaving between their two lines a large open space until within a league of the mountain of Vivières, which stood out on the distant horizon, with its crumbling red sides tufted with yellow blossoming gorse.
It was all lifeless, sad, lonely, and silent in winter; the birds had migrated to more cheerful climes; only the rooks' nests remained, sole and persistent proprietors of the highest trees about that magnificent domain. It seemed as though hordes of savages had spoiled the grounds and laid waste the forests.
This state of desolation lasted four months of the year; but with the beginning of April the grass began to spring up, braving the hoar frost, which spread a silvery carpet over it every morning; the buds of the trees, which had looked so bare, so desolate, so dead, began to put on their velvety down. The sleeping birds—(where do birds sleep? we know nothing about them;—) wake up, hop about among the branches, and soon begin building their nests. Thence, each day of the month and every hour of the day brings its own changes, as part of Nature's great awakening. Chestnuts, limes, and beeches are the spring's advance guard. Daisies star the lawn; buttercups glow richly; and grasshoppers chirp in the long grass. Butterflies, flying flowers that blow in the air, come and kiss the flowers of earth. Pretty children come out of the town in their white frocks and their pink ribbons, and play on the grass: everything moves, and revives, and lives. Spring comes with the first breath of May, and we think we feel her touch as she passes in the morning mists, shaking her rose-filled hair and reviving the world with her sweet-scented breath.
It was at this joyous time of renaissance that our town held it's feast—a feast ever lavish and charming, for Nature took upon herself to defray its costs.