BOOK 1.


CHAPTER I

THE TRAVELLER

During the first days of the month of September, 1832, a young man about
thirty years of age was walking through one of the valleys in Lorraine
originating in the Vosges mountains. A little river which, after a few
leagues of its course, flows into the Moselle, watered this wild basin
shut in between two parallel lines of mountains. The hills in the south
became gradually lower and finally dwindled away into the plain.
Alongside the plateau, arranged in amphitheatres, large square fields
stripped of their harvest lay here and there in the primitive forest; in
other places, innumerable oaks and elms had been dethroned to give place
to plantations of cherry-trees, whose symmetrical rows promised an
abundant harvest.

This contest of nature with industry is everywhere, but is more
pronounced in hilly countries. The scene changed, however, as one
penetrated farther, and little by little the influence of the soil gained
ascendancy. As the hills grew nearer together, enclosing the valley in a
closer embrace, the clearings gave way to the natural obduracy of the
soil. A little farther on they disappeared entirely. At the foot of one
of the bluffs which bordered with its granite bands the highest plateau
of the mountain, the forest rolled victoriously down to the banks of the
river.