Yet in spite of excavation and mutilation not life only but vigor dwelt in this wooden shell.  The extreme ends of the longer boughs were firewood, touchwood, and the crown was gone this many a year:  but narrow the circle a very little to where the indomitable trunk could still shoot sap from its cruse deep in earth, and there on every side burst the green foliage in its season countless as the sand.  The leaves carved centuries ago from these very models, though cut in stone, were most of them mouldered, blunted, notched, deformed:  but the delicate types came back with every summer, perfect and lovely as when the tree was but their elder brother:  and greener than ever:  for, from what cause nature only knows, the leaves were many shades richer than any other tree could show for a hundred miles round; a deep green, fiery, yet soft; and then their multitude—­the staircases of foliage as you looked up the tree, and could scarce catch a glimpse of the sky.  An inverted abyss of color, a mound, a dome, of flake emeralds that quivered in the golden air.

And now the sun sets; the green leaves are black; the moon rises:  her cold light shoots across one half that giant stem.

How solemn and calm stands the great round tower of living wood, half ebony, half silver, with its mighty cloud above of flake jet leaves tipped with frosty fire!

Now is the still hour to repeat in a whisper the words of the dame of Beaurepaire, “You were here before us:  you will be here when we are gone.”

We leave the hoary king of trees standing in the moonlight, calmly defying time, and follow the creatures of a day; for, what they were, we are.

A spacious saloon panelled; dead but showy white picked out sparingly with gold.  Festoons of fruits and flowers finely carved in wood on some of the panels.  These also not smothered in gilding, but as it were gold speckled here and there, like tongues of flame winding among insoluble snow.  Ranged against the walls were sofas and chairs covered with rich stuffs well worn.  And in one little distant corner of the long room a gray-haired gentleman and two young ladies sat round a small plain table, on which burned a solitary candle; and a little way apart in this candle’s twilight an old lady sat in an easy-chair, thinking of the past, scarce daring to inquire the future.  Josephine and Rose were working:  not fancy-work but needle-work; Dr. Aubertin writing.  Every now and then he put the one candle nearer the girls.  They raised no objection:  only a few minutes after a white hand would glide from one or other of them like a serpent, and smoothly convey the light nearer to the doctor’s manuscript.

“Is it not supper-time?” he inquired.  “I have an inward monitor; and I think our dinner was more ethereal than usual.”

“Hush!” said Josephine, and looked uneasily towards her mother.  “Wax is so dear.”