How Professor Valeyon Loses his Handkerchief

Moreover, it was not toward the road that Professor Valeyon's eyes
were most often turned. They generally wandered southward, over the
ample garden, and across the long, winding valley, to the range of
rough-backed hills, which abruptly invaded the farther horizon. It was
a sufficiently varied and vigorous prospect, and one which years had
endeared to the old gentleman, as if it were the features of a friend.
Especially was he fond of looking at a certain open space, near the
summit of a high, wooded hill, directly opposite. It was like an oasis
among a desert of trees. Had it become overgrown, or had the surrounding
timber been cut away, the professor would have taken it much to heart. A
voluntary superstition of this kind is not uncommon in elderly gentlemen
of more than ordinary intellectual power. It is a sort of half-playful
revenge they wreak upon themselves for being so wise. Probably Professor
Valeyon would have been at a loss to explain why he valued this small
green spot so much; but, in times of doubt or trouble, be seemed to
find help and relief in gazing at it.

The entire range of hills was covered with a dense and tangled
timber-growth, save where the wood-cutters had cleared out a steep,
rectangular space, and dotted it with pale-yellow lumber-piles, that
looked as if nothing less than a miracle kept them from rolling over and
over down to the bottom of the valley, or where the gray, irregular face
of a precipice denied all foothold to the boldest roots. There was
nothing smooth, swelling, or graceful, in the aspect of the range. They
seemed, hills though they were, to be inspired with the souls of
mountains, which were ever seeking to burst the narrow bounds that
confined them. And, for his part, the professor liked them much better
than if they had been mountains indeed. They gave an impression of
greater energy and vitality, and were all the more comprehensible and
lovable, because not too sublime and vast.