Thence, by the Bois d'Hyver, the
Ventes-Alexandre, and the Pins Brules, to the clean hostelry, dry
clothes, and dinner.
THE WOODS IN SPRING
I think you will like the forest best in the sharp early springtime,
when it is just beginning to reawaken, and innumerable violets peep
from among the fallen leaves; when two or three people at most sit
down to dinner, and, at table, you will do well to keep a rug about
your knees, for the nights are chill, and the salle-a-manger opens on
the court. There is less to distract the attention, for one thing,
and the forest is more itself. It is not bedotted with artists'
sunshades as with unknown mushrooms, nor bestrewn with the remains of
English picnics. The hunting still goes on, and at any moment your
heart may be brought into your mouth as you hear far-away horns; or
you may be told by an agitated peasant that the Vicomte has gone up
the avenue, not ten minutes since, 'A FOND DE TRAIN, MONSIEUR, ET
AVEC DOUZE PIPUERS.'
If you go up to some coign of vantage in the system of low hills that
permeates the forest, you will see many different tracts of country,
each of its own cold and melancholy neutral tint, and all mixed
together and mingled the one into the other at the seams.
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