time it had seemed nothing less than "impeccable," after the manner
of the great sacred products of the past, though in a living tongue.
Nay! to Gaston for one, the power of the old classic poetry itself
was explained by the reflex action of the new, and might seem to
justify its pretensions at last.

From the poem fancy wandered to the poet, and curious youth would
fain see the writer in person,--what a poet was like, with anxious
surmises, this way and that, as to the degree in which the precious
mental particles might be expected to have wrought up the outward
presence to their own high quality. A creature of the eye, in this
case at least, the intellectual hold on him being what it was, Gaston
had no fear of disillusion. His poetic readings had borrowed an
additional relish from the genial, companionable, manner of his life
at this time, taking him into the remotest corners of the vast level
land, and its outer ring of blue up-lands; amid which, as he rode one
day with "the three," towards perfectly new prospects, he had chanced
on some tangible rumour of the great poet's present abode. The hill
they had mounted at leisure, in talk with a village priest, dropped
suddenly upon a vague tract of wood and pasture, [59] with a dark
ridge beyond towards the south-west; and the black notch, which broke
its outline against the mellow space of evening light, was the
steeple of the priory of Croix-val, of which reverend body Pierre de
Ronsard, although a layman, was, by special favour of King Charles,
Superior.

Though a formal peace was come, though the primary movers of war had
taken hands or kissed each other, and were exchanging suspicious
courtesies, yet the unquiet temper of war was still abroad
everywhere, with an after-crop of miserable incidents. The