After eight days of strolling about with the countess, the illustrious editor of the “Journal des Debats” knew by heart the Chinese kiosk, the bridges, the isles, the hermitage, the dairy, the ruined temple, the Babylonian ice-house, and all the other delusions invented by landscape architects which some nine hundred acres of land can be made to serve.  He now wished to find the sources of the Avonne, which the general and the countess daily extolled in the evening, making plans to visit them which were daily forgotten the next morning.  Above Les Aigues the Avonne really had the appearance of an alpine torrent.  Sometimes it hollowed a bed among the rocks, sometimes it went underground; on this side the brooks came down in cascades, there they flowed like the Loire on sandy shallows where rafts could not pass on account of the shifting channels.  Blondet took a short cut through the labyrinths of the park to reach the gate of Conches.  This gate demands a few words, which give, moreover, certain historical details about the property.

The original founder of Les Aigues was a younger son of the Soulanges family, enriched by marriage, whose chief ambition was to make his elder brother jealous,—­a sentiment, by the bye, to which we owe the fairy-land of Isola Bella in the Lago Maggiore.  In the middle ages the castle of Les Aigues stood on the banks of the Avonne.  Of this old building nothing remains but the gateway, which has a porch like the entrance to a fortified town, flanked by two round towers with conical roofs.  Above the arch of the porch are heavy stone courses, now draped with vegetation, showing three large windows with cross-bar sashes.  A winding stairway in one of the towers leads to two chambers, and a kitchen occupies the other tower.  The roof of the porch, of pointed shape like all old timber-work, is noticeable for two weathercocks perched at each end of a ridge-pole ornamented with fantastic iron-work.  Many an important place cannot boast of so fine a town hall.  On the outside of this gateway, the keystone of the arch still bears the arms of Soulanges, preserved by the hardness of the stone on which the chisel of the artist carved them, as follows:  Azure, on a pale, argent, three pilgrim’s staff’s sable; a fess bronchant, gules, charged with four grosses patee, fitched, or; with the heraldic form of a shield awarded to younger sons.  Blondet deciphered the motto, “Je soule agir,”—­one of those puns that crusaders delighted to make upon their names, and which brings to mind a fine political maxim, which, as we shall see later, was unfortunately forgotten by Montcornet.  The gate, which was opened for Blondet by a very pretty girl, was of time-worn wood clamped with iron.  The keeper, wakened by the creaking of the hinges, put his nose out of the window and showed himself in his night-shirt.

“So our keepers sleep till this time of day!” thought the Parisian, who thought himself very knowing in rural customs.