This year, Gerard had prepared, in collusion with Grossetete, a surprise for Madame Graslin’s birthday.  He had built a little hermitage on the largest of the islands, rustic on the outside and elegantly arranged within.  The old banker took part in the conspiracy, in which Farrabesche, Fresquin, Clousier’s nephew, and nearly all the well-to-do people in Montegnac co-operated.  Grossetete sent down some beautiful furniture.  The clock tower, copied from that at Vevay, made a charming effect in the landscape.  Six boats, two for each pond, were secretly built, painted, and rigged during the winter by Farrabesche and Guepin, assisted by the carpenter of Montegnac.

When the day arrived (about the middle of May) after a breakfast Madame Graslin gave to her friends, she was taken by them across the park—­which was finely laid out by Gerard, who, for the last five years, had improved it like a landscape architect and naturalist—­to the pretty meadow of the valley of the Gabou, where, at the shore of the first lake, two of the boats were floating.  This meadow, watered by several clear streamlets, lay at the foot of the fine ampitheatre where the valley of the Gabou begins.  The woods, cleared in a scientific manner, so as to produce noble masses and vistas that were charming to the eye, enclosed the meadow and gave it a solitude that was grateful to the soul.  Gerard had reproduced on an eminence that chalet in the valley of Sion above the road to Brieg which travellers admire so much; here were to be the dairy and the cow-sheds of the chateau.  From its gallery the eye roved over the landscape created by the engineer which the three lakes made worthy of comparison with the beauties of Switzerland.

The day was beautiful.  In the blue sky, not a cloud; on earth, all the charming, graceful things the soil offers in the month of May.  The trees planted ten years earlier on the banks—­weeping willows, osier, alder, ash, the aspen of Holland, the poplars of Italy and Virginia, hawthorns and roses, acacias, birches, all choice growths arranged as their nature and the lay of the land made suitable—­held amid their foliage a few fleecy vapors, born of the waters, which rose like a slender smoke.  The surface of the lakelet, clear as a mirror and calm as the sky, reflected the tall green masses of the forest, the tops of which, distinctly defined in the limpid atmosphere, contrasted with the groves below wrapped in their pretty veils.  The lakes, separated by broad causeways, were three mirrors showing different reflections, the waters of which flowed from one to another in melodious cascades.  These causeways were used to go from lake to lake without passing round the shores.  From the chalet could be seen, through a vista among the trees, the thankless waste of the chalk commons, resembling an open sea and contrasting with the fresh beauty of the lakes and their verdure.

When Veronique saw the joyousness of her friends as they held out their hands to help her into the largest of the boats, tears came into her eyes and she kept silence till they touched the bank of the first causeway.  As she stepped into the second boat she saw the hermitage with Grossetete sitting on a bench before it with all his family.