The loneliness of these
coverts is so excessive, that there are moments when pleasure draws
to the verge of fear. You listen and listen for some noise to break
the silence, till you grow half mesmerised by the intensity of the
strain; your sense of your own identity is troubled; your brain
reels, like that of some gymnosophist poring on his own nose in
Asiatic jungles; and should you see your own outspread feet, you see
them, not as anything of yours, but as a feature of the scene around
you.
Still the forest is always, but the stillness is not always unbroken.
You can hear the wind pass in the distance over the tree-tops;
sometimes briefly, like the noise of a train; sometimes with a long
steady rush, like the breaking of waves. And sometimes, close at
band, the branches move, a moan goes through the thicket, and the
wood thrills to its heart. Perhaps you may hear a carriage on the
road to Fontainebleau, a bird gives a dry continual chirp, the dead
leaves rustle underfoot, or you may time your steps to the steady
recurrent strokes of the woodman's axe. From time to time, over the
low grounds, a flight of rooks goes by; and from time to time the
cooing of wild doves falls upon the ear, not sweet and rich and near
at hand as in England, but a sort of voice of the woods, thin and far
away, as fits these solemn places.
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