A Shandrydan.
The top of the great plateau of Auvergne looked beautiful the evening I reached it—a fine July evening, when the sun had yet three hours to go down, and I was about a dozen miles from the village of the Baths. I had been vainly flattering myself that something or other might have detained M. de Mirepoix's carriage, and that I should have the pleasure of viewing this splendid scene in company with Madame. She had so strong a taste for the picturesque, that I knew her sympathies would be expressed, and I anticipated no small pleasure from eliciting her sentiments. To see what is magnificent in the society of one whose feelings of the sublime and beautiful emulate your own in intensity, multiplies the charm, and elevates the pleasure, by the mutual communication of the effects perceived and produced. So I looked out for their carriage anxiously.
Nothing met my eye but the long undulating plain stretching like a rounded wave or swell of the ocean to the feet of the mountains, and the distant blue horizon—to the west nearly as far off as the Garonne—to the east as far as the Saone. The plateau was covered with fine grass, pastured by large herds of small dark-coloured cattle, goats, and a few sheep; wild-flowers grew here and there of fragrant smell, and the tops of the vast pine forests peeped up from the ends of the deep ravines that run far into the bosom of the still hills. The sky was without a cloud, and the sun seemed to gain double glory as he fell towards his western bed.
My spirits rose with the scene; I was excited and yet happy; the full genial warmth of nature was before me, and around me, and in me. I could have danced and sung for joy. I could have stopped there for ever, and I wanted somebody to say all this to, and who should re-echo the same to me.
There stood the postilion—dull, senseless, brutal animal—he had got off his horses, for I was once more out of the cabriolet, and was bounding over the turf to look over the edge of a precipice on my right hand: there he stood, he had lighted another pipe, and was thinking only of a good chopine of wine out of his pour-boire, when he should arrive at the village.
"A fine view, mon ami!" said I, at last, in pure despair.
He gave a shrug with his shoulders.
"Very high mountains those," I went on.
He turned round and looked at them; and then tapped his pipe against his whip.
"What splendid forests!" I added.