We rode for miles, and yet the only monotony was in the good road. Now, we passed great rocks, some grey and riven, moss and lichens clinging to them, and bushes and trees struggling from their crevices and growing on their summit; others bare and shadeless. Here, stretching from boulder to boulder, were deep beds of purple heather paled by the sun—the heather on which Millet used to love to lie and look up to the clouds and the blue sky; and there, feathered ferns, yellow and autumnal in the open spaces, green and fresh in the shade of rocks and trees, “made a luxurious couch more soft than sleep.”—Now the way went through the very heart of a pine wood; pine needles instead of heather covered the ground, and even carpeted the road; a spicy fragrance, sweetest of all sweet forest scents, perfumed the air; the wind sighed softly through the topmost branches, and the tricycle wheeled without a sound over the brown carpet, on which shadows fell and the sun shone.
Then the pine scent changed to a rich earthy smell, and to the right the pines gave way to beeches, tall and slim, growing in groups of two or three together, with here and there grassy glades leading to dense thickets; on the left a close undergrowth, high enough to shut out the prospect, made a hedge-like border to the road. And then again, on either hand, old moss-grown trees rose to a venerable height, their branches meeting overhead.
There is something in a forest, as in a cathedral, that makes one quiet. We rode for miles in silence. Then at last, in the green aisle, enthusiasm breaking all bounds——
“This is immense!” cried J——.
—And so indeed it was, in more than the American sense.
But even the vast forest of Fontainebleau cannot go on for ever.—We were not a little sorry when we wheeled out into an open space at the top of a long hill, where children were chattering and playing and two nuns were sitting on the grass. But we were sorrier when, at the beginning of the coast, the brake went all wrong and refused to work. The hill was steep. All we could do was to run into a bank by the road, when the machine stopped.
