A Woman of Thirty Author:Honoré de Balzac Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A HIDDEN GRIEF. Between the Seine and the little river Loing lies a wide flat country, skirted on the one side by the Forest of Fontaine- bleau, and marked ou... more »t as to its southern limits by the towns of Moret, Montereau, and Nemours. It is a dreary country; little knolls of hills appear only at rare intervals, and a coppice here and there among the fields affords cover for game; and beyond, upon every side, stretches the endless gray or yellowish horizon peculiar to Beauce, Sologne, and Berri. In the very centre of the plain, at equal distances from Moret and Montereau, the traveler passes the old castle of Saint-Lange, standing amid surroundings which lack neither dignity nor stateliness. There are magnificent avenues of elm- trees, great gardens encircled by the moat, and a circumference of walls about a huge memorial pile which represents the profits of the maltdte (illegal taxation), the gains of farmers- general, legalized malversation, or the vast fortunes of great houses now brought low beneath the hammer of the Civil Code. Should any artist or dreamer of dreams chance to stray along the roads full of deep ruts, or over the heavy land which secures the place against intrusion, he will wonder how it happened that this romantic old place was set down in a savanna of grain-land, a desert of chalk, and sand, and mail, where gayety dies away and melancholy is a natural product of the soil. The voiceless solitude, the monotonous horizon-line which weigh upon the spirits, are negative beauties, which only suit with sorrow that refuses to be comforted. Hither, at the close of the year 1820, came a woman, still young, well known in Paris for her charm, her fair face, and her wit; and to the immense astonishment of the little village a mile away, this woman of high rank an...« less