In no other part of France can the traveller meet with such
grandiose contrasts as those offered by the great basin of the
Couesnon, and the valleys hidden among the rocks of Fougeres and the
heights of Rille. Their beauty is of that unspeakable kind in which
chance triumphs and all the harmonies of Nature do their part. The
clear, limpid, flowing waters, the mountains clothed with the vigorous
vegetation of those regions, the sombre rocks, the graceful buildings,
the fortifications raised by nature, and the granite towers built by
man; combined with all the artifices of light and shade, with the
contrasts of the varieties of foliage, with the groups of houses where
an active population swarms, with the lonely barren places where the
granite will not suffer even the lichen to fasten on its surface, in
short, with all the ideas we ask a landscape to possess: grace and
awfulness, poesy with its renascent magic, sublime pictures,
delightful ruralities,--all these are here; it is Brittany in bloom.
The tower called the Papegaut, against which the house now occupied by
Mademoiselle de Verneuil rested, has its base at the very bottom of
the precipice, and rises to the esplanade which forms the cornice or
terrace before the church of Saint-Leonard. From Marie's house, which
was open on three sides, could be seen the horseshoe (which begins at
the tower itself), the winding valley of the Nancon, and the square of
Saint-Leonard.
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