Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/53

 from the top of a hill, from its slope or at the turn, just when the promise is of a barren landscape, of discovering a fresh valley watered by a river, and a little town sheltered under the rock like a hive in the hollow of an old willow? At the sound of the Hue! of the postilion who is walking beside his horses, one shakes off sleep, one admires as a dream within a dream some beautiful landscape which is to the traveler what a remarkable passage in a book is to a reader, one of Nature’s brilliant thoughts. Such is the sensation caused by the sudden view of Nemours when one arrives there from Bourgogne. From there it is seen, encircled by bare, gray, white and black rocks, weirdly shaped, like those that are so often found in the forest of Fontainebleau, and from which the scattered trees shoot up, standing clearly out against the sky and giving a wild appearance to this species of crumbled wall. There the long forest hill ends which slopes from Nemours to Bouron while skirting the road. At the bottom of this crude amphitheatre stretches a field where the Loing flows, forming sheeted waterfalls. This delicious landscape, which follows the Montargis road, resembles an opera scene, so studied are the effects. One morning, the doctor, whom a rich invalid in Bourgogne had summoned, and who was returning post haste to Paris, not having said at the preceding stage which road he wished to take, was driven unconsciously through Nemours and, between two naps, once more beheld the country in the midst of which his childhood had been passed.