The estate, under the forester's care, had improved a little and
promised a modest income. The house, though somewhat dilapidated,
was easily made livable. But the one thing that was full of glory
and splendor, triumphantly prosperous, was the great avenue of
beeches. Their long, low aisle of broad arches was complete. They
shimmered with a pearly mist of buds in early spring and later
with luminous green of tender leafage. In mid-summer they formed a
wide, still stream of dark, unruffled verdure; in autumn they were
transmuted through glowing yellow into russet gold; in winter
their massy trunks were pillars of gray marble and the fan-tracery
of their rounded branches was delicately etched against the sky.
"Look at them," the baron would say to the guests whom the fame of
his learning and the charm of his wide-ranging conversation often
brought to his house. "Those beeches were planted by my grandfather
after the battle of Wagram, when Napoleon whipped the Austrians.
After that came the Beresina and Leipsic and Waterloo and how many
battles and wars of furious, perishable men.
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