that is graceful, stupid; everything that is rich, poor; and oh! how our
delightful boudoirs, our charming salons, our exquisite costumes, our
palpitating plays, our interesting novels, our serious books will all be
consigned to the garret or be used for old paper and manure! O
posterity, above all things do not forget our gothic salons, our
Renaissance furniture, M. Pasquier's discourses, the shape of our hats,
and the aesthetics of _La Revue des Deux Mondes!_

While we were pondering upon these lofty philosophical considerations,
our wagon had hauled us over to Tiffanges. Seated side by side in a sort
of tin tub, our weight crushed the tiny horse, which swayed to and fro
between the shafts. It was like the twitching of an eel in the body of a
musk-rat. Going down hill pushed him forward, going up hill pulled him
backward, while uneven places in the road threw him from side to side,
and the wind and the whip lashed him alternately. The poor brute! I
cannot think of him now without a certain feeling of remorse.

The road down hill is curved and its edges are covered with clumps of
sea-rushes or large patches of a certain reddish moss. To the right, on
an eminence that starts from the bottom of the dale and swells in the
middle like the carapace of a tortoise, one perceives high, unequal
walls, the crumbling tops of which appear one above another.

One follows a hedge, climbs a path, and enters an open portal which has
sunken into the ground to the depth of one third of its ogive. The men
who used to pass through it on horseback would be obliged to bend over
their saddles in order to enter it to-day. When the earth is tired of
supporting a monument, it swells up underneath it, creeps up to it like
a wave, and while the sky causes the top to crumble away, the ground
obliterates the foundations. The courtyard was deserted and the calm