AT THE GREEN PILLAR
Cocheforet lies in a billowy land of oak and beech and chestnuts
--a land of deep, leafy bottoms and hills clothed with forest.
Ridge and valley, glen and knoll, the woodland, sparsely peopled
and more sparsely tilled, stretches away to the great snow
mountains that here limit France. It swarms with game--with
wolves and bears, deer and boars. To the end of his life I have
heard that the great king loved this district, and would sigh,
when years and State fell heavily on him, for the beech groves
and box-covered hills of South Bearn. From the terraced steps of
Auch you can see the forest roll away in light and shadow, vale
and upland, to the base of the snow peaks; and, though I come
from Brittany and love the smell of the salt wind, I have seen
few sights that outdo this.
It was the second week of October, when I came to Cocheforet,
and, dropping down from the last wooded brow, rode quietly into
the place at evening. I was alone, and had ridden all day in a
glory of ruddy beech leaves, through the silence of forest roads,
across clear brooks and glades still green.
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