“From time to time a gentleman or a lady comes over to a kiosk with a slate roof, which shelters a woman of smiling and gentle aspect, and a spring boiling in a basin of cement:  Not a word is exchanged between the invalid and the female custodian of the healing water.  She hands the newcomer a little glass in which air bubbles sparkle in the transparent liquid.  The guest drinks and goes off with a grave step to resume his interrupted walk beneath the trees.

“No noise in the little park, no breath of air in the leaves; no voice passes through this silence.  One ought to write at the entrance to this district:  ‘No one laughs here; they take care of their health.’

“The people who chat resemble mutes who merely open their mouths to simulate sounds, so afraid are they that their voices might escape.

“In the hotel, the same silence.  It is a big hotel, where you dine solemnly with people of good position, who have nothing to say to each other.  Their manners bespeak good breeding, and their faces reflect the conviction of a superiority of which it might be difficult for some to give actual proofs.

“At two o’clock I made my way up to the Casino, a little wooden but perched on a hillock, which one reaches by a goat path.  But the view from that height is admirable.  Chatel-Guyon is situated in a very narrow valley, exactly between the, plain and the mountain.  I perceive, at the left, the first great billows of the mountains of Auvergne, covered with woods, and here and there big gray patches, hard masses of lava, for we are at the foot of the extinct volcanoes.  At the right, through the narrow cut of the valley, I discover a plain, infinite as the sea, steeped in a bluish fog which lets one only dimly discern the villages, the towns, the yellow fields of ripe grain, and the green squares of meadowland shaded with apple trees.  It is the Limagne, an immense level, always enveloped in a light veil of vapor.

“The night has come.  And now, after having dined alone, I write these lines beside my open window.  I hear, over there, in front of me, the little orchestra of the Casino, which plays airs just as a foolish bird might sing all alone in the desert.

“A dog barks at intervals.  This great calm does one good.  Goodnight.

“July 16th.—­Nothing new.  I have taken a bath and then a shower bath.  I have swallowed three glasses of water, and I have walked along the paths in the park, a quarter of an hour between each glass, then half an hour after the last.  I have begun my twenty-five days.

“July 17th.—­Remarked two mysterious, pretty women who are taking their baths and their meals after every one else has finished.

“July 18th.—­Nothing new.

“July 19th.—­Saw the two pretty women again.  They have style and a little indescribable air which I like very much.