de plume of Daniel Stern, whose acquaintance she had recently made in Paris, she writes in May 1836:—
I am still at La Châtre, staying with my friends, who spoil me like a child of five years old. I inhabit a suburb, built in terraces against the rock—at my feet lies a wonderfully pretty valley. A garden thirty feet square and full of roses, and a terrace extensive enough for you to walk along it in ten steps, are my drawing-room, my study, and gallery. My bed-room is rather large—it is decorated with a red cotton curtained bed—a real peasant's bed, hard and flat, two straw chairs, and a white wooden table. My window is situated six feet above the terrace. By the trellised trees on the wall I can get out and in, and stroll at night among my thirty feet of flowers without having to open a door or awake anyone.
Sometimes I go out riding alone, at dusk. I come in towards midnight. My cloak, my rough hat, and the melancholy trot of my nag, make me pass in the darkness for a commercial traveller, or a farm-boy.
One of my grand amusements is to watch the transition from night to day; it effects itself in a thousand different manners. This revolution, apparently so uniform, has every day a character of its own.
The summer that had set in was unusually hot and sultry. Writing to Madame d'Agoult, July 10, 1836, she thus describes her enjoyment of a season that allowed of some of the pleasures of primitive existence:—
I start on foot at three in the morning, fully intending to be back by eight o'clock; but I lose myself in the lanes; I forget myself on the banks of the river; I run after butterflies; and I get home at midday in a state of torrefaction impossible to describe.
Another time the sight of the cooling stream is more than she can resist, and she walks into the Indre fully dressed; but a few minutes more and the sun has dried her garments, and she proceeds on her walk of
