thing charming in almost any landscape, or at least something interesting; but at Labutín he would hardly find anywhere an inviting subject for his pencil. There was nothing picturesque about the castle or park; they seemed to be placed there as a necessity, and the surroundings were only a flat, extensive plain, where one field followed another in straight uniform lines. The most pleasing part of all was the so-called avenue, with its double row of old, wide-spreading lime trees, which branched off at right angles from the west wall of the park, and extended for about half a mile in a perfectly straight line. According to the family records, this avenue had been planted by the grandfather of the late baron the year he was married—in those golden days, when the flogging-bench and the thong had to set right the obstinate heads and perverse wills of rustic dependents, and when it was considered a matter of no consequence to let a piece of fertile ground lie barren for the amusement and pleasure of the noble. From the park, only a small gate for foot-passengers led to the avenue; and the road, over which the lime trees joined their branches, forming a beautiful shady dome, had been neglected for years, and was in many places overgrown with grass.
The old baroness, even in her husband’s lifetime, wanted to have the avenue done away with, calculating that the lime trees would realize a good deal of money, and the ground taken up by it would give several roods of fertile land; but the avenue, being as it were a part of the family history, had therefore a certain right to existence which she did not like to destroy. She felt, indeed, that this was rather a weakness on her part, but thought at the same time it was one she could afford to indulge. At the other end of the avenue there was a pond, the only one
