Off they set—they went nice and fast certainly, but not so fast but that the children could admire the beautiful feathery foliage as they passed. They drove through the forest—for the trees that Hugh had so admired were those of a forest—on and on, swiftly but yet smoothly; never in his life had Hugh felt any motion so delightful.
"What a good coachman Houpet is!" exclaimed Hugh. "I never should have thought he could drive so well. How does he know the road, Jeanne?"
"There isn't any road, so he doesn't need to know it," said Jeanne. "Look before you, Chéri. You see there is no road. It makes itself as we go, so we can't go wrong."
Hugh looked straight before him. It was as Jeanne had said. The trees grew thick and close in front, only dividing—melting away like a mist—as the quaint little carriage approached them.
Hugh looked at them with fresh surprise.
"Are they not real trees?" he said.
"Of course they are," said Jeanne. "Now they're beginning to change; that shows we are getting to the middle of the forest. Look, look, Chéri!"
Hugh "looked" with all his eyes. What Jeanne called "changing" was a very wonderful process. The trees, which hitherto had been of a very bright, delicate green, began gradually to pale in colour, becoming first greenish-yellow, then canary colour, then down to the purest white. And from white they grew into silver, sparkling like innumerable diamonds, and then slowly altered into a sort of silver-grey, gradually rising into grey-blue, then into a more purple-blue, till they reached the richest corn-flower shade. Then began another series of lessening shades, which again, passing through a boundary line of gold, rose by indescribable degrees to deep yet brilliant crimson. It would be impossible to name all the variations through which they passed. I use the names of the colours and shades which are familiar to you, children, but the very naming any shade gives an unfair idea of the marvellous delicacy with which one tint melted into another,—as well try to divide and mark off the hues of a dove's breast, or of the sky at sunset. And all the time the trees themselves were of the same form and foliage as at first, the leaves—or fronds I feel inclined to call them, for they were more like very, very delicate ferns or ferny grass than leaves—with which each branch was luxuriantly clothed, seeming to bathe themselves in each new colour as the petals of a flower welcome a flood of brilliant sunshine.
"Oh, how pretty!" said Hugh, with a deep sigh of pleasure. "It is like the lamps, only much prettier. I think, Jeanne, this must be the country of pretty colours."
"This forest is called the Forest of the Rainbows. I know that," said Jeanne. "But I don't think they call this the country of pretty colours, Chéri. You see it is the country of so many pretty things. If we lived in it always, we should never see the end of the beautiful things there are. Only——"