"Viens—mere t'battra, elle est soule aussi."

The sailors out yonder, busy in the rigging, and the men on the decks of the smart brigs and steamships, whistled and shouted and sang, as indifferent to this picture of human misery and degradation as if they had no kinship with it.

As a frame to the picture, Honfleur town lay beneath the crown of its hills; on the tops and sides of the latter, villa after villa shot through the trees, a curve of roof-line, with rows of daintily draped windows. At the right, close to the wharves, below the wooded heights, there loomed out a quaint and curious gateway flanked by two watchtowers, grim reminders of the Honfleur of the great days. And above and about the whole, encompassing villa-crowded hills and closely packed streets, and the forest of masts trembling against the sky, there lay a heaven of spring and summer.

Renard had driven briskly up to a low, rambling facade parallel with the quays. It was the "Cheval Blanc." A crowd assembled on the instant, as if appearing according to command.

"Allons—n'encombrez pas ces dames!" cried a very smart individual, in striking contrast to the down at-heel air of the hotel—a personage who took high-handed possession of us and our traps. "Will ces dames desire a salon—there is un vrai petit bijou empty just now," murmured a voice in a purring soprano, through the iron opening of the cashier's desk.

Another voice was crying out to us, as we wound our way upward in pursuit of the jewel of a salon. "And the widow, La Veuve, shall she be dry or sweet?"

When we entered the low dining-room, a little later, we found that the artist as well as the epicure has been in active conspiracy to make the dinner complete; the choice of the table proclaimed one accomplished in massing effects. The table was parallel with the low window, and through the latter was such a picture as one travels hundreds of miles to look upon, only to miss seeing it, as a rule. There was a great breadth of sky through the windows; against the sky rose the mastheads; and some red and brown sails curtained the space, bringing into relief the gray line of the sad-faced old houses fringing the shoreline.

"Couldn't have chosen better if we'd tried, could we? It's just the right hour, and just the right kind of light. Those basins are unendurable—sinks of iniquitous ugliness, unless the tide's in and there's a sunset going on. Just look now! Who cares whether Honfleur has been done to death by the tourist horde or not? and been painted until one's art-stomach turns? I presume I ought to beg your pardon, but I can't stand the abomination of modern repetitions; the hand-organ business in art, I call it. But at this hour, at this time of the year, before this rattle-trap of an inn is as packed with Baedeker attachments as a Siberian prison is with Nihilists—to run out here and look at these quays and basins, and old Honfleur lying here, beneath her green cliffs—well, short of Cairo, I don't know any better bit of color. Look out there, now! See those sails, dripping with color, and that fellow up there, letting the sail down—there, splash it goes into the water, I knew it would; now tell me where will you get better blues or yellows or browns, with just the right purples in the shore line, than you'll get here?"

Renard was fairly started; he had the bit of the born monologist between his teeth; he stopped barely long enough to hear even an echoing assent. We were quite content; we continued to sip our champagne and to feast our eyes. Meanwhile Renard talked on.

"Guide-books—what's the use of guide-books? What do they teach you, anyway? Open any one of the cursed clap-trap things. Yes, yes, I know I oughtn't to use vigorous language."

"Do," bleated Charm, smiling sweetly up at him. "Do, it makes you seem manly."

Even Renard had to take time to laugh.

"Thank you! I'm not above making use of any aids to create that illusion. Well, as I was saying, what guide-book ever really helped anyone to see?—that's what one travels for, I take it. Here, for instance, Murray or Baedeker would give you this sort of thing: 'Honfleur, an ancient town, with pier, beaches, three floating docks, and a good deal of trade in timber, cod, etc.; exports large quantities of eggs to England.' Good heavens! it makes one boil! Do sane, reasonable mortals travel three thousand miles to read ancient history done up in modern binding, served up a la Murray, a la Baedeker?"

"Oh, you do them injustice, I think—the guides do go in for a little more of the picturesque than that—"

"And how—how do they do it? This is the sort of thing they'll give you: 'Church of St. Catherine is large and remarkable, entirely of timber and plaster, the largest of its kind in France.' Ah! ha! that's the picturesque with a vengeance. No, no, my friends, throw the guide-books into the river, pitch them overboard through the port holes, along with the flowers, and letters to be read three days out, and the nasty novels people send you to make the crossing pleasant. And when you travel, really travel, mind, never make a plan—just go—go anywhere, whenever the impulse seizes you—and you may hope to get there, in the right way, possibly."

Here Renard stopped to finish his glass, draining-the last drop of the yellow liquid. Then he went on: "To travel! To start when an impulse seizes one! To go—anywhere! Why not! It was for this, after all, that all of us have come our three thousand miles." Perhaps it was the restless tossing of the shipping out yonder in the basins that awoke an answering impatience within, in response to Renard's outburst. Where did they go, those ships, and, up beyond this mouth of the Seine, how looked the shores, and what life lived itself out beneath the rustling poplars? Is it the mission of all flowing water to create an unrest in men's minds?

Meanwhile, though the talk was not done, the dinner was long since eaten. We rose to take a glimpse of Honfleur and its famous old basin. The quays and the floating docks, in front of which we had been dining, are a part of the nineteenth century; the great ships ride in to them from the sea. But here, in this inner quadrangular dock, beside which we were soon standing, traced by Duquesne when Louis the Great discovered the maritime importance of Honfleur, we found still reminders of the old life. Here were the same old houses that, in the seventeenth century, upright and brave in their brand new carvings, saw the high-decked, picturesquely painted Spanish and Portuguese ships ride in to dip their flag to the French fleur-de-lis. There are but few of the old streets left to crowd about the shipping life that still floats here, as in those bygone days of Honfleur pride;—when Havre was but a yellow strip of sand; when the Honfleur merchants would have laughed to scorn any prophet's cry of warning that one day that sand-bar opposite, despised, disregarded, boasting only a chapel and a tavern, would grow and grow, and would steal year by year and inch by inch bustling Honfleur's traffic, till none was left.

In the old adventurous days, along with the Spanish ships came others, French trading and fishing vessels, with the salty crustations of long voyages on their hulls and masts. The wharves were alive then with fish-wives, whom Evelyn will tell you wore "useful habits made of goats' skin." The captains' daughters were in quaint Normandy costumes; and the high-peaked coifs and the stiff woollen skirts, as well as the goat-skin coats, trembled as the women darted hither and thither among the sailors—whose high cries filled the air as they picked out mother and wife. Then were bronzed beards buried in the deeply-wrinkled old meres' faces, and young, strong arms clasped about maidens' waists. The whole town rang with gayety and with the mad joy of reunion. On the morrow, coiling its way up the steep hillsides, wound the long lines of the grateful company, one composed chiefly of the crews of these vessels happily come to port. The procession would mount up to the little church of Notre Dame de Grace perched on the hill overlooking the harbor. Some even—so deep was their joy at deliverance from shipwreck and so fervent their piety—crawled up, bare-footed, with bared head, wives and children following, weeping for joy, as the rude ex-votos were laid by the sailors' trembling hands at the feet of the Virgin Lady.

As reminders of this old life, what is left? Within the stone quadrangle we found clustered a motley fleet of wrecks and fishing-vessels; the nets, flung out to dry in the night air, hung like shrouds from the mastheads; here and there a figure bestrode a deck, a rough shape, that seemed endowed with a double gift of life, so still and noiseless was the town. Around the silent dock, grouped in mysterious medley and confusion, were tottering roof lines, projecting eaves, narrow windows, all crazily tortured and out of shape. Here and there, beneath the broad beams of support, a little interior, dimly lighted, showed a knot of sailors gathered, drinking or lounging. Up high beneath a chimney perilously overlooking a rude facade, a quaint shape emerged, one as decrepit and forlorn of life and hope as the decaying houses it overlooked. Silence, poverty, wretchedness, the dregs of life, to this has Honfleur fallen. These old houses, in their slow decay, hiding in their dark bosom the gaunt secrets of this poverty and human misery, seemed to be dancing a dance of drunken indifference. Some day the dance will end in a fall, and then the Honfleur of the past will not even boast of a ghost, as reminder of its days of splendor.

An artist quicker than anyone else, I think, can be trusted to take one out of history and into the picturesque. Renard refused to see anything but beauty in the decay about us; for him the houses were at just the right drooping angle; the roof lines were delightful in their irregularity; and the fluttering tremor of the nets, along the rigging, was the very poetry of motion.

"We'll finish the evening on the pier," he exclaimed, suddenly; "the moon will soon be up—we can sit it out there and see it begin to color things."

The pier was more popular than the quaint old dock. It was crowded with promenaders, who, doubtless, were taking a bite of the sea-air. Through the dusk the tripping figures of gentlemen in white flannels and jaunty caps brushed the provincial Honfleur swells. Some gentle English voices told us some of the villa residents had come down to the pier, moved by the beauty of the night. Groups of sailors, with tanned faces and punctured ears hooped with gold rings, sat on the broad stone parapets, talking unintelligible Breton patois. The pier ran far out, almost to the Havre cliffs, it seemed to us, as we walked along in the dusk of the young night. The sky was slowly losing its soft flame. A tender, mellow half light was stealing over the waters, making the town a rich mass of shade. Over the top of the low hills the moon shot out, a large, globular mass of beaten gold. At first it was only a part and portion of the universal lighting, of the still flushed sky, of the red and crimson harbor lights, of the dim twinkling of lamps and candles in the rude interiors along the shore. But slowly, triumphantly, the great lamp swung up; it rose higher and higher into the soft summer sky, and as it mounted, sky and earth began to pale and fade. Soon there was only a silver world to look out upon—a wealth of quivering silver over the breast of the waters, and a deeper, richer gray on cliffs and roof tops. Out of this silver world came the sound of waters, lapping in soft cadence against the pier; the rise and fall of sails, stirring in the night wind; the tread of human footsteps moving in slow, measured beat, in unison with the rhythm of the waters. Just when the stars were scattering their gold on the bosom of the sea-river, a voice rang out, a rich, full baritone. Quite near, two sailors were seated, with their arms about each other's shoulders. They also were looking at the moonlight, and one of them was singing to it:

_"Te souviens-tu, Marie, De notre enfance aux champs?

"Te souviens-tu? Le temps que je regrette C'est le temps qui n'est plus._"



DIVES: AN INN ON A HIGH-ROAD.



CHAPTER XIV.

A COAST DRIVE.

On our return to Villerville we found that the charm of the place, for us, was a broken one. We had seen the world; the effect of that experience was to produce the common result—there was a fine deposit of discontent in the cup of our pleasure.

Madame Fouchet had made use of our absence to settle our destiny; she had rented her villa. This was one of the bitter dregs. Another was to find that the life of the village seemed to pass us by; it gave us to understand, with unflattering frankness, that for strangers who made no bargains for the season, it had little or no civility to squander. For the Villerville beach, the inn, and the villas were crowded. Mere Mouchard was tossing omelettes from morning till night; even Augustine was far too hurried to pay her usual visit to the creamery. A detachment of Parisian costumes and beribboned nursery maids was crowding out the fish-wives and old hags from their stations on the low door-steps and the grasses on the cliffs.

Even Fouchet was no longer a familiar figure in the foreground of his garden; his roses were blooming now for the present owners of his villa. He and madame had betaken themselves to a box of a hut on the very outskirts of the village—a miserable little hovel with two rooms and a bit of pasture land being the substitute, as a dwelling, for the gay villa and its garden along the sea-cliffs. Pity, however, would have been entirely wasted on the Fouchet household and their change of habitation. Tucked in, cramped, and uncomfortable beneath the low eaves of their cabin ceilings, they could now wear away the summer in blissful contentment: Were they not living on nothing—on less than nothing, in this dark pocket of a chaumiere, while their fine house yonder was paying for itself handsomely, week after week? The heart beats high, in a Norman breast, when the pocket bulges; gold—that is better than bread to feel in one's hand.

The whole village wore this triumphant expression—now that the season was beginning. Paris had come down to them, at last, to be shorn of its strength; angling for pennies in a Parisian pocket was better, far, than casting nets into the sea. There was also more contentment in such fishing—for true Norman wit.

Only once did the village change its look of triumph to one of polite regret; for though it was Norman, it was also French. It remembered, on the morning of our departure, that the civility of the farewell costs nothing, and like bread prodigally scattered on the waters, may perchance bring back a tenfold recompense.

Even the morning arose with a flattering pallor. It was a gray day. The low houses were like so many rows of pale faces; the caps of the fishwives, as they nodded a farewell, seemed to put the village in half mourning.

"You will have a perfect day for your drive—there's nothing better than these grays in the French landscape," Renard was saying, at our carriage wheels; "they bring out every tone. And the sea is wonderful. Pity you're going. Grand day for the mussel-bed. However, I shall see you, I shall see you. Remember me to Monsieur Paul; tell him to save me a bottle of his famous old wine. Good-by, good-by."

There was a shower of rose-leaves flung out upon us; a great sweep of the now familiar beret; a sonorous "Hui!" from our driver, with an accompaniment of vigorous whip-snapping, and we were off.

The grayness of the closely-packed houses was soon exchanged for the farms lying beneath the elms. With the widening of the distance between our carriage-wheels and Villerville, there was soon a great expanse of mouse-colored sky and the breath of a silver sea. The fields and foliage were softly brilliant; when the light wind stirred the grain, the poppies and bluets were as vivid as flowers seen in dreams.

It is easy to understand, I think, why French painters are so enamoured of their gray skies—such a background makes even the commonplace wear an air of importance. All the tones of the landscape were astonishingly serious; the features of the coast and the inland country were as significant as if they were meditating an outbreak into speech. It was the kind of day that bred reflection; one could put anything one liked into the picture with a certainty of its fitting the frame. We were putting a certain amount of regret into it; for though Villerville has seen us depart with civilized indifference or the stolidity of the barbarian—for they are one, we found our own attainments in the science of unfeelingness deficient: to look down upon the village from the next hill top was like facing a lost joy.

Once on the highroad, however, the life along the shore gave us little time for the futility of regret. Regret, at best, is a barren thing: like the mule, it is incapable of perpetuating its own mistakes; it appears to apologize, indeed, for its stupidity by making its exit as speedily as possible. With the next turn of the road we were in fitting condition to greet the wildest form of adventure.

Pedlars' carts and the lumbering Normandy farm wagons were, at first, our chief companions along the roadway. Here and there a head would peep forth from a villa window, or a hand be stretched out into the air to see if any rain was falling from the moist sky. The farms were quieter than usual; there was an air of patient waiting in the courtyards, among the blouses and standing cattle, as though both man and beast were there in attendance on the day and the weather, till the latter could come to the point of a final decision in regard to the rain.

Finally, as we were nearing Trouville, the big drops fell. The grain-fields were soon bent double beneath the spasmodic shower. The poppies were drenched, so were the cobble paved courtyards; only the geese and the regiment of the ducks came abroad to revel in the downpour. The villas were hermetically sealed now—their summer finery was not made for a wetting. The landscape had no such reserves; it gave itself up to the light summer shower as if it knew that its raiment, like Rachel's, when dampened the better to take her plastic outlines, only gained in tone and loveliness the closer it fitted the recumbent figure of mother earth.

Our coachman could never have been mistaken for any other than a good Norman. He was endowed with the gift of oratory peculiar to the country; and his profanity was enriched with all the flavor of the provincial's elation in the committing of sin. From the earliest moment of our starting, the stream of his talk had been unending. His vocabulary was such as to have excited the envy and despair of a French realist, impassioned in the pursuit of "the word."

"Hui!—b-r-r-r!"—This was the most common of his salutations to his horse. It was the Norman coachman's familiar apostrophe, impossible of imitation; it was also one no Norman horse who respects himself moves an inch without first hearing. Chat Noir was a horse of purest Norman ancestry; his Percheron blood was as untainted as his intelligence was unclouded by having no mixtures of tongues with which to deal. His owner's "Hui!" lifted him with arrowy lightness to the top of a hill. The deeper "Bougre" steadied his nerve for a good mile of unbroken trotting. Any toil is pleasant in the gray of a cool morning, with a friend holding the reins who is a gifted monologist; even imprecations, rightly administered, are only lively punctuations to really talented speech.

"Come, my beauty, take in thy breath—courage! The hill is before thee! Curse thy withered legs, and is it thus thou stumbleth? On—up with thee and that mountain of flesh thou carriest about with thee." And the mountain of flesh would be lifted—it was carried as lightly by the finely-feathered legs and the broad haunches as if the firm avoirdupois were so much gossamer tissue. On and on the neat, strong hoofs rang their metallic click, clack along the smooth macadam. They had carried us past the farm-houses, the cliffs, the meadows, and the Norman roofed manoirs buried in their apple-orchards. These same hoofs were now carefully, dexterously picking their way down the steep hill that leads directly into the city of the Trouville villas.

Presently, the hoofs came to a sudden halt, from sheer amazement. What was this order, this command the quick Percheron hearing had overheard? Not to go any farther into this summer city—not to go down to its sand-beach—not to wander through the labyrinth of its gay little streets?—Verily, it is the fate of a good horse, how often! to carry fools, and the destiny of intelligence to serve those deficient in mind and sense.

The criticism on our choice of direction was announced by the hoofs turning resignedly, with the patient assent of the fatigue that is bred of disgust, into one of the upper Trouville by-streets. Our coachman contented himself with a commiserating shrug and a prolonged flow of explanation. Perhaps ces dames, being strangers, did not know that Trouville was now beginning its real season—its season of baths? The Casino, in truth, was only opened a week since; but we could hear the band even now playing above the noise of the waves. And behold, the villas were filling; each day some grande dame came down to take possession of her house by the sea.

How could we hope to make a Frenchman comprehend an instinctive impulse to turn our backs on the Trouville world? What, pray, had we just now to do with fashion—with the purring accents of boudoirs, with all the life we had run away from? Surely the romance—the charm of our present experiences would be put to flight once we exchanged salutations with the beau monde—with that world that is so sceptical of any pleasure save that which blooms in its own hot-houses, and so disdainful of all forms of life save those that are modelled on fashion's types. We had fled from cities to escape all this; were we, forsooth, to be pushed into the motley crowd of commonplace pleasure-seekers because of the scorn of a human creature, and the mute criticism of a beast that was hired to do the bidding of his betters? The world of fashion was one to be looked out upon as a part of the general mise-en-scene—as a bit of the universal decoration of this vast amphitheatre of the Normandy beaches.

Chat noir had little reverence for philosophic reflections; he turned a sharp corner just then; he stopped short, directly in front of the broad windows of a confectioner's shop. This time he did not appeal in vain to the strangers with a barbarian's contempt for the great world. The brisk drive and the salt in the air were stimulants to appetite to be respected; it is not every day the palate has so fine an edge.

"Du the, mesdames—a l'Anglaise?" a neatly-corsetted shape, in black, to set off a pair of dazzling pink cheeks, shone out behind rows of apricot tarts. There was also a cap that conveyed to one, through the medium of pink bows, the capacities of coquetry that lay in the depths of the rich brown eyes beneath them. The attractive shape emerged at once from behind the counter, to set chairs about the little table. We were bidden to be seated with an air of smiling grace, one that invested the act with the emphasis of genuine hospitality. Soon a great clatter arose in the rear of the shop; opinions and counter-opinions were being volubly exchanged in shrill French, as to whether the water should or should not come to a boil; also as to whether the leaves of oolong or of green should be chosen for our beverage. The cap fluttered in several times to ask, with exquisite politeness—a politeness which could not wholly veil the hidden anxiety—our own tastes and preferences. When the cap returned to the battling forces behind the screen, armed with the authority of our confessed prejudices, a new war of tongues arose. The fate of nations, trembling on the turn of a battle, might have been settled before that pot of water, so watched and guarded over, was brought to a boil. When, finally, the little tea service was brought in, every detail was perfect in taste and appointment, except the tea; the action that had held out valiantly, that the water should not boil, had prevailed, as the half-soaked tea- leaves floating on top of our full cups triumphantly proclaimed.

We sipped the beverage, agreeing Balzac had well named it ce boisson fade et melancolique; the novelist's disdain being the better understood as we reflected he had doubtless only tasted it as concocted by French ineptitude. We were very merry over the liver-colored liquid, as we sipped it and quoted Balzac. But not for a moment had our merriment deceived the brown eyes and the fluttering cap-ribbons. A little drama of remorse was soon played for our benefit. It was she, her very self, the cap protested—as she pointed a tragic finger at the swelling, rounded line of her firm bodice—it was she who had insisted that the water should not boil; there had been ladies—des vraies anglaises—here, only last summer, who would not that the water should boil, when their tea was made. And now, it appears that they were wrong, "c'etait probablement une fantaisie de la part de ces dames." Would we wait for another cup? It would take but an instant, it was a little mistake, so easy to remedy. But this mistake, like many another, like crime, for instance, could never be remedied, we smilingly told her; a smile that changed her solicitous remorse to a humorist's view of the situation.

Another humorist, one accustomed to view the world from heights known as trapeze elevations, we met a little later on our way out of the narrow upper streets; he was also looking down over Trouville. It was a motley figure in a Pierrot garb, with a smaller striped body, both in the stage pallor of their trade. These were somewhat startling objects to confront on a Normandy high-road. For clowns, however, taken by surprise, they were astonishingly civil. They passed their "bonjour" to us and to the coachman as glibly as though accosting us from the commoner circus distance.

"They have come to taste of the fresh air, they have," laconically remarked our driver, as his round Norman eyes ran over the muscled bodies of the two athletes. "I had a brother who was one—I had; he was a famous one—he was; he broke his neck once, when the net had been forgotten. They all do it—ils se cassent le cou tous, tot ou tard! Allons toi t'as peur, toi?" Chat noir's great back was quivering with fear; he had no taste, himself, for shapes like these, spectral and wan as ghosts, walking about in the sun. He took us as far away as possible, and as quickly, from these reminders of the thing men call pleasure.

We, meanwhile, were asking Pierre for a certain promised chateau, one famous for its beauty, between Trouville and Cabourg.

"It is here, madame—the chateau," he said, at last.

Two lions couchant, seated on wide pedestals beneath a company of noble trees, were the only visible inhabitants of the dwelling. There was a sweep of gardens: terraces that picked their way daintily down the cliffs toward the sea, a mansard roof that covered a large mansion—these were the sole aspects of chateau life to keep the trees company. In spite of Pierre's urgent insistence that the view was even more beautiful than the one from the hill, we refused to exchange our first experiences of the beauty of the prospect for a second which would be certain to invite criticism; for it is ever the critic in us that plays the part of Bluebeard to our many-wived illusions.

We passed between the hedgerows with not even a sigh of regret. We were presently rewarded by something better than an illusion—by reality, which, at its best, can afford to laugh at the spectral shadow of itself. Near the chateau there lived on, the remnant of a hamlet. It was a hamlet, apparently, that boasted only one farm-house; and the farm-house could show but a single hayrick. Beneath the sloping roof, modelled into shape by a pitchfork and whose symmetrical lines put Mansard's clumsy creation yonder to the blush, sat an old couple—a man and a woman. Both were old, with the rounded backs of the laborer; the woman's hand was lying in the man's open palm, while his free arm was clasped about her neck with all the tenderness of young love. Both of the old heads were laid back on the pillow made by the freshly-piled grasses. They had done a long day's work already, before the sun had reached its meridian; they were weary and resting here before they went back to their toil.

This was better than the view; it made life seem finer than nature; how rich these two poor old things looked, with only their poverty about them!

Meanwhile Pierre had quickly changed the rural mise-en-scene; instead of pink hawthorn hedges we were in the midst of young forest trees. Why is it that a forest is always a surprise in France? Is it that we have such a respect for French thrift, that a real forest seems a waste of timber? There are forests and forests; this one seemed almost a stripling in its tentative delicacy, compared to the mature splendor of Fontainebleau, for example. This forest had the virility of a young savage; it was neither dense nor vast; yet, in contrast to the ribbony grain fields, and to the finish of the villa parks, was as refreshing to the eye as the right chord that strikes upon the ear after a succession of trills.

In all this fair Normandy sea-coast, with its wonderful inland contrasts, there was but one disappointing note. One looked in vain for the old Normandy costumes. The blouse and the close white cap—this is all that is left of the wondrous headgear, the short brilliant petticoats, the embroidered stomacher, and the Caen and Rouen jewels, abroad in the fields only a decade ago.

Pierre shrugged his shoulders when asked a question concerning these now pre-historic costumes.

"Ah! mademoiselle, you must see for yourself, that the peasant who doesn't despise himself dresses now in the fields as he would in Paris."

As if in confirmation of Pierre's news of the fashions, there stepped forth from an avenue of trees, fringing a near farm-house, a wedding- party. The bride was in the traditional white of brides; the little cortege following the trail of her white gown, was dressed in costumes modelled on Bon Marche styles. The coarse peasant faces flamed from bonnets more flowery than the fields into which they were passing. The men seemed choked in their high collars; the agony of new boots was written on faces not used to concealing such form of torture. Even the groom was suffering; his bliss was something the gay little bride hanging on his arm must take entirely for granted. It was enough greatness for the moment to wear broadcloth and a white vest in the face of men.

"Laissez, laissez, Marguerite, it is clean here; it will look fine on the green!" cried the bride to an improvised train-bearer, who had been holding up the white alpaca. Then the full splendor of the bridal skirt trailed across the freshly mown grasses. An irrepressible murmur of admiration welled up from the wedding guests; even Pierre made part of the chorus. The bridegroom stopped to mop his face, and to look forth proudly, through starting eyeballs, on the splendor of his possessions.

"Ah! Lizette, thou art pretty like that, thou knowest. Faut l'embrasser, tu sais."

He gave her a kiss full on the lips. The little bride returned the kiss with unabashed fervor. Then she burst into a loud fit of laughter.

"How silly you look, Jean, with your collar burst open."

The groom's enthusiasm had been too much for his toilet; the noon sun and the excitements of the marriage service had dealt hardly with his celluloid fastenings. All the wedding cortege rushed to the rescue. Pins, shouts of advice, pieces of twine, rubber fastenings, even knives, were offered to the now exploding bridegroom; everyone was helping him repair the ravages of his moment of bliss; everyone excepting the bride. She sat down upon her train and wept from pure rapture of laughter.

Pierre shook his head gravely, as he whipped up his steed.

"Jean will repent it; he'll lose worse things than a button, with Lizette. A woman who laughs like that on the threshold of marriage will cry before the cradle is rocked, and will make others weep. However, Jean won't be thinking of that—to-night."

"Where are they going—along the highroad?"

"Only a short distance. They turn in there," and he pointed with his whip to a near lane; "they go to the farm-house now—for the wedding dinner. Ah! there'll be some heavy heads to-morrow. For you know, a Norman peasant only really eats and drinks well twice in his life—when he marries himself and when his daughter marries. Lizette's father is rich—the meat and the wines will be good to-night."

Our coachman sighed, as if the thought of the excellence of the coming banquet had disturbed his own digestion.



CHAPTER XV.

GUILLAUME-LE-CONQUERANT.

The wedding party was lost in a thicket. Pierre gave his whip so resounding a snap, it was no surprise to find ourselves rolling over the cobbles of a village street.

"This is Dives, mesdames, this is the inn!"

Pierre drew up, as he spoke, before a long, low facade.

Now, no one, I take it, in this world enjoys being duped. Surely disappointment is only a civil term for the varying degrees of fraud practised on the imagination. This inn, apparently, was to be classed among such frauds. It did not in the least, externally at least, fulfil Renard's promises. He had told us to expect the marvellous and the mediaeval in their most approved period. Yet here we were, facing a featureless exterior! The facade was built yesterday—that was writ large, all over the low, rambling structure. One end, it is true, had a gabled end; there was also an old shrine niched in glass beneath the gable, and a low Norman gateway with rude letters carved over the arch. June was in its glory, and the barrenness of the commonplace structure was mercifully hidden by a wreath of pink and amber roses. But one scarcely drives twenty miles in the sun to look upon a facade of roses!

Chat noir, meanwhile, was becoming restless. Pierre had managed to keep his own patience well in hand. Now, however, he broke forth:

"Shall we enter, my ladies?"

Pierre drove us straight into paradise; for here, at last, within the courtyard, was the inn we had come to seek.

A group of low-gabled buildings surrounded an open court. All of the buildings were timbered, the diagonal beams of oak so old they were black in the sun, and the snowy whiteness of fresh plaster made them seem blacker still. The gabled roofs were of varying tones and tints; some were red, some mossy green, some as gray as the skin of a mouse; all were deeply, plentifully furrowed with the washings of countless rains, and they were bearded with moss. There were outside galleries, beginning somewhere and ending anywhere. There were open and covered outer stairways so laden with vines they could scarce totter to the low heights of the chamber doors on which they opened; and there were open sheds where huge farm-wagons were rolled close to the most modern of Parisian dog-carts. That not a note of contrast might be lacking, across the courtyard, in one of the windows beneath a stairway, there flashed the gleam of some rich stained glass, spots of color that were repeated, with quite a different lustre, in the dappled haunches of rows of sturdy Percherons munching their meal in the adjacent stalls. Add to such an ensemble a vagrant multitude of rose, honeysuckle, clematis, and wistaria vines, all blooming in full rivalry of perfume and color; insert in some of the corners and beneath some of the older casements archaic bits of sculpture—strange barbaric features with beards of Assyrian correctness and forms clad in the rigid draperies of the early Jumieges period of the sculptor's art; lance above the roof ridges the quaint polychrome finials of the earlier Palissy models; and crowd the rough cobble-paved courtyard with a rare and distinguished assemblage of flamingoes, peacocks, herons, cockatoos swinging from gabled windows, and game-cocks that strut about in company with pink doves—and you have the famous inn of Guillaume le Conquerant!

Meanwhile an individual, with fine deep-gray eyes, and a face grave, yet kindly, over which a smile was humorously breaking, was patiently waiting at our carriage door. He could be no other than Monsieur Paul, owner and inn-keeper, also artist, sculptor, carver, restorer, to whom, in truth, this miracle of an inn owed its present perfection and picturesqueness.

"We have been long expecting you, mesdames," Monsieur Paul's grave voice was saying. "Monsieur Renard had written to announce your coming. You took the trouble to drive along the coast this fine day? It is idyllically lovely, is it not—under such a sun?"

Evidently the moment of enchantment was not to be broken by the worker of the spell. Monsieur Paul and his inn were one; if one was a poem the other was a poet. The poet was also lined with the man of the practical moment. He had quickly summoned a host of serving-people to take charge of us and our luggage.

"Lizette, show these ladies to the room of Madame de Sevigne. If they desire a sitting-room—to the Marmousets."

The inn-keeper gave his commands in the quiet, well-bred tone of a man of the world, to a woman in peasant's dress. She led us past the open court to an inner one, where we were confronted with a building still older, apparently, than those grouped about the outer quadrangle. The peasant passed quickly beneath an overhanging gallery, draped in vines. She was next preceding us up a spiral turret stairway; the adjacent walls were hung here and there with faded bits of tapestry. Once more she turned to lead us along an open gallery; on this several rooms appeared to open. On each door a different sign was painted in rude Gothic letters. The first was "Chambre de l'Officier;" the second, "Chambre du Cure," and the next was flung widely open. It was the room of the famous lady of the incomparable Letters. The room might have been left—in the yesterday of two centuries—by the lady whose name it bore. There was a beautiful Seventeenth century bedstead, a couple of wide arm-chairs, with down pillows for seats, and a clothes press with the carvings and brass work peculiar to the epoch of Louis XIV. The chintz hangings and draperies were in keeping, being copies of the brocades of that day. There were portraits in miniature of the courtiers and the ladies of the Great Reign on the very ewers and basins. On the flounced dressing-table, with its antique glass and a diminutive patch-box, now the receptacle of Lubin's powder, a sprig of the lovely Rose The was exhaling a faint, far-away century perfume. It was surely a stage set for a real comedy; some of these high-coiffed ladies, who knows? perhaps Madame de Sevigne herself would come to life, and give to the room the only thing it lacked—the living presence of that old world grace and speech.

Presently, we sallied forth on a further voyage of discovery. We had reached the courtyard when Monsieur Paul crossed it; it was to ask if, while waiting for the noon breakfast, we would care to see the kitchen; it was, perhaps, different to those now commonly seen in modern taverns.

The kitchen which was thus modestly described as unlike those of our own century might easily, except for the appetizing smell of the cooking fowls and the meats, have been put under lock and key and turned over to a care-taker as a full-fledged culinary museum of antiquities. One entire side of the crowded but orderly little room was taken up by a huge open fireplace. The logs resting on the great andirons were the trunks of full-grown trees. On two of the spits were long rows of fowl and legs of mutton roasting; the great chains were being slowly turned by a chef in the paper cap of his profession. In deep burnished brass bowls lay water-cresses; in Caen dishes of an age to make a bric-a-brac collector turn green with envy, a Bearnaise sauce was being beaten by another gallic master-hand. Along the beams hung old Rouen plates and platters; in the numberless carved Normandy cupboards gleamed rare bits of Delft and Limoges; the walls may be said to have been hung with Normandy brasses, each as burnished as a jewel. The floor was sanded and the tables had attained that satiny finish which comes only with long usage and tireless use of the brush. There was also a shrine and a clock, the latter of antique Norman make and design.

The smell of the roasting fowls and the herbs used by the maker of the sauces, a hungry palate found even more exciting than this most original of kitchens. There was a wine that went with the sauce; this fact Monsieur Paul explained, on our sitting down to the noonday meal; one which, in remembrance of Monsieur Renard's injunctions, he would suggest our trying. He crossed the courtyard and disappeared into the bowels of the earth, beneath one of the inn buildings, to bring forth a bottle incrusted with layers of moist dirt. This Sauterne was by some, Monsieur Paul smilingly explained, considered as among the real treasures of the inn. Both it and the sauce, we were enabled to assure him a moment later, had that golden softness which make French wines and French sauces at their best the rapture of the palate.

In the courtyard, as our breakfast proceeded, a variety of incidents was happening. We were facing the open archway; through it one looked out upon the high-road. A wheelbarrow passed, trundled by a peasant- girl; the barrow stopped, the girl leaving it for an instant to cross the court.

"Bonjour, mere—"

"Bonjour, ma fille—it goes well?" a deep guttural voice responded, just outside of the window.

"Justement—I came to tell you the mare has foaled and Jean will be late to-night."

"Bien."

"And Barbarine is still angry—"

"Make up with her, my child—anger is an evil bird to take to one's heart," the deep voice went on.

"It is my mother," explained Monsieur Paul. "It is her favorite seat, out yonder, on the green bench in the courtyard. I call it her judge's bench," he smiled, indulgently, as he went on. "She dispenses justice with more authority than any other magistrate in town. I am Mayor, as it happens, just now; but madame my mother is far above me, in real power. She rules the town and the country about, for miles. Everyone comes to her sooner or later for counsel and command. You will soon see for yourselves."

A murmur of assent from all the table accompanied Monsieur Paul's prophecy.

"Femme vraiment remarquable," hoarsely whispered a stout breakfaster, behind his napkin, between two spoonsful of his soup.

"Not two in a century like her," said my neighbor.

"No—nor two in all France—non plus," retorted the stout man.

"She could rule a kingdom—hey, Paul?"

"She rules me—as you see—and a man is harder to govern than a province, they say," smiled Monsieur Paul with a humorous relish, obviously the offspring of experience. "In France, mesdames," he added, a sweeter look of feeling coming into the deep eyes, "you see we are always children—toujours enfants—as long as the mother lives. We are never really old till she dies. May the good God preserve her!" and he lifted his glass toward the green bench. The table drank the toast, in silence.



CHAPTER XVI.

THE GREEN BENCH.

In the course of the first few days we learned what all Dives had known for the past fifty years or so—that the focal point of interest in the inn was centred in Madame Le Mois. She drew us, as she had the country around for miles, to circle close about her green bench.

The bench was placed at the best possible point for one who, between dawn and darkness, made it the business of her life to keep her eye on her world. Not the tiniest mouse nor the most spectral shade could enter or slip away beneath the open archway without undergoing inspection from that omniscient eye, that seemed never to blink nor to grow weary. This same eye could keep its watch, also, over the entire establishment, with no need of the huge body to which it was attached moving a hair's-breadth. Was it Nitouche, the head-cook, who was grumbling because the kitchen-wench had not scoured the brass saucepans to the last point of mirrory brightness? Behold both Nitouche and the trembling peasant-girl, together with the brasses as evidence, all could be brought at an instant's call, into the open court. Were the maids—were Marianne or Lizette neglecting their work to flirt with the coachmen in the sheds yonder?

"Allons, mes filles—doucement, la-bas—et vos lits? qui les fait—les bons saints du paradis, peut-etre?" And Marianne and Lizette would slink away to the waiting beds. Nothing escaped this eye. If the poule sultane was gone lame, limping in the inner quadrangle, madame's eye saw the trouble—a thorn in the left claw, before the feathered cripple had had time to reach her objective point, her mistress's capacious lap, and the healing touch of her skilful surgeon's fingers. Neither were the cockatoes nor the white parrots given license to make all the noise in the court-yard. When madame had an unusually loquacious moment, these more strictly professional conversationists were taught their place.

"E'ben, toi—and thou wishest to proclaim to the world what a gymnast thou art—swinging on thy perch? Quietly, quietly, there are also others who wish to praise themselves! And now, my child, you were telling me how good you had been to your old grandmother, and how she scolded you. Well, and how about obedience to our parents, hein—how about that?" This, as the old face bent to the maiden beside her.

There was one, assuredly, who had not failed in his duty to his parents. Monsieur Paul's whole life, as we learned later, had been a willing sacrifice to the unconscious tyranny of his mother's affection. The son was gifted with those gifts which, in a Parisian atelier, would easily have made him successful, if not famous. He had the artistic endowment in an unusual degree; it was all one to him, whether he modelled in clay, or carved in wood, or stone, or built a house, or restored old bric-a-brac. He had inherited the old world roundness of artistic ability—his was the plastic renascent touch that might have developed into that of a Giotto or a Benvenuto.

It was such a sacrifice as this that he had lain at his mother's feet.

Think you for an instant the clever, witty, canny woman in Madame Le Mois looked upon her son's renouncing the world of Paris, and holding to the glories of Dives and their famous inn in the light of a sacrifice? "Parbleu!" she would explode, when the subject was touched on, "it was a lucky thing for him that Paul had had an old mother to keep him from burning his fingers. Paris! What did the provinces want with Paris? Paris had need enough of them, the great, idle, shiftless, dissipated, cruel old city, that ground all their sons to powder, and then scattered their ashes abroad like so many cinders. Oh, yes, Paris couldn't get along without the provinces, to plunder and rob, to seduce their sons away from living good, pure lives, and to suck these lives as a pig would a trough of fresh water! But the provinces, if they valued their souls, shunned Paris as they would the devil. And as for artists—when it came to the young of the provinces, who thought they could paint or model—

"Tenez, madame—this is what Paris does for our young. My neighbor yonder," and she pointed, as only Frenchwomen point, sticking her thumb into the air to designate a point back of her bench, "my neighbor had a son like Paul. He too was always niggling at something. He niggled so well a rich cousin sent him up to Paris. Well, in ten years he comes back, famous, rich, too, with a wife and even a child. The establishment is complete. Well, they come here to breakfast one fine morning, with his mother, whom he put at a side table, with his nurse—he is ashamed of his mother, you see. Well, then his wife talks and I hear her. 'Mais, mon Charles, c'est toi qui est le plus fameux—il n'y a que toi! Tu es un dieu, tu sais—il n'y a pas deux comme toi!' The famous one deigns to smile then, and to eat of his breakfast. His digestion had gone wrong, it appears. The Figaro had placed his name second on a certain list, after a rival's! He alone must be great—there must not be another god of painting save him! He! He! that's fine, that's greatness—to lose one's appetite because another is praised, and to be ashamed of one's old mother!"

Madame Le Mois's face, for a moment, was terrible to look upon. Even in her kindliest moments hers was a severe countenance, in spite of the true Norman curves in mouth and nostril—the laughter-loving curves. Presently, however, the fierceness of her severity melted; she had caught sight of her son. He was passing her, now, with the wine bottles for dinner piled up in his arms.

"You see," croaked the mother, in an exultant whisper, "I've saved him from all that—he's happy, for he still works. In the winter he can amuse himself, when he likes, with his carving and paintbrushes. Ah, tiens, du monde qui arrive!" And the old woman seated herself, with an air of great dignity, to receive the new-comers.

The world that came in under the low archway was of an altogether different character from any we had as yet seen. In a satin-lined victoria, amid the cushions, lay a young and lovely-eyed Anonyma. Seated beside her was a weak-featured man, with a huge flower decorating his coat lappel. This latter individual divided the seat with an army of small dogs who leaped forth as the carriage stopped.

Madame Le Mois remained immovable on her bench. Her face was as enigmatic as her voice, as it gave Suzette the order to show the lady to the salon bleu. The high Louis XV. slipper, as it picked its way carefully after Suzette, never seemed more distinctly astray than when its fair wearer confided her safety to the insecure footing of the rough, uneven cobbles. In a brief half-hour the frou-frou of her silken skirts was once more sweeping the court-yard. She and her companion and the dogs chose the open air and a tent of sky for their banqueting-hall. Soon all were seated at one of the many tables placed near the kitchen, beneath the rose-vines.

Madame gave the pair a keen, dissecting glance. Her verdict was delivered more in the emphasis of her shrug and the humor of her broad wink than in the loud-whispered "Comme vous voyez, chere dame, de toutes sortes ici, chez nous—mais—toujours bon genre!"

The laughter of one who could not choose her world was stopped, suddenly, by the dipping of the thick fingers into an old snuff-box. That very afternoon the court-yard saw another arrival; this one was treated in quite a different spirit.

A dog-cart was briskly driven into the yard by a gentleman who did not appear to be in the best of humor. He drew his horse up with a sudden fierceness; he as fiercely called out for the hostler. Monsieur Paul bit his lip; but he composedly confronted the disturbed countenance perched on the driver's seat. The gentleman wished.

"I want indemnity—that is what I want. Indemnity for my horse," cried out a thick, coarse voice, with insolent authority.

"For your horse? I do not think I understand—"

"O—h, I presume not," retorted the man, still more insolently; "people don't usually understand when they have to pay. I came here a week ago, and stayed two days; and you starved my horse—and he died—that is what happened—he died!"

The whole court-yard now rang with the cries of the assembled household. The high, angry tones had called together the last serving-man and scullery-maid; the cooks had come out from their kitchens; they were brandishing their long-handled saucepans. The peasant-women were shrieking in concert with the hostlers, who were raising their arms to heaven in proof of their innocence. Dogs, cats, cockatoes swinging on their perches, peacocks, parrots, pelicans, and every one of the cocks swarmed from the barnyards and garden and cellars, to add their shrill cries and shrieks to the universal babel.

Meanwhile, calm and unruffled as a Hindoo goddess, and strikingly similar in general massiveness of structure and proportion to the common reproduction of such deities, sat Madame Le Mois. She went on with her usual occupation; she was dipping fresh-cut salad leaves into great bowls of water as quietly as if only her own little family were assembled before her. Once only she lifted her heavily-moulded, sagacious eyebrow at the irate dog-cart driver, as if to measure his pitiful strength. She allowed the fellow, however, to touch the point of abuse before she crushed him.

Her first sentence reduced him to the ignominy of silence. All her people were also silent. What, the deep sarcastic voice chanted on the still air—what, this gentleman's horse had died—and yet he had waited a whole week to tell them of the great news? He was, of a truth, altogether too considerate. His own memory, perhaps, was also a short one, since it told him nothing of the condition in which the poor beast had arrived, dropping with fatigue, wet with sweat, his mouth all blood, and an eye as of one who already was past the consciousness of his suffering? Ah no, monsieur should go to those who also had short memories.

"For we use our eyes—we do. We are used to deal with gentlemen—with Christians" (the Hebrew nose of the owner of the dead horse, even more plainly abused the privilege of its pedigree in proving its race, by turning downward, at this onslaught of the mere's satire), "as I said, with Christians," continued the mere, pitilessly. "And do those gentlemen complain and put upon us the death of their horses? No, my fine sir, they return—ils reviennent, et sont revenus depuis la Conquete!"

With this fine climax madame announced the court as closed. She bowed disdainfully, with a grand and magisterial air, to the defeated claimant, who crept away, sulkily, through the low archway.

"That is the way to deal with such vermin, Paul; whip them, and they turn tail." And the mere shook out a great laugh from her broad bosom, as she regaled her wide nostrils with a fresh pinch of snuff. The assembled household echoed the laugh, seasoning it with the glee of scorn, as each went to his allotted place.



CHAPTER XVII.

THE WORLD THAT CAME TO DIVES.

It was a world of many mixtures, of various ranks and habits of life that found its way under the old archway, and sat down at the table d'hote breakfasts and dinners. Madame and her gifted son were far too clever to attempt to play the mistaken part of Providence; there was no pointed assortment made of the sheep and the goats; at least, not in a way to suggest the most remote intention of any such separation being premeditated. Such separation as there was came about in the most natural and in the pleasantest possible fashion. When Petitjean, the pedler, and his wife drove in under the Gothic sign, the huge lumbering vehicle was as quickly surrounded as when any of the neighboring notabilities arrived in emblazoned chariots. Madame was the first to waddle forward, nodding up toward the open hood as, with a short, brisk, business "Bonjour," she welcomed the head of Petitjean and his sharp-eyed spouse looking over the aprons.

The pedler is always popular with his world and Dives knew Petitjean to be as honest as a pedler can ever hope to be in a world where small pence are only made large by some one being sacrificed on the altar of duplicity. Therefore it was that Petitjean's hearse-like cart was always a welcome visitor;—one could at least be as sure of a just return for one's money in trading with a pedler as from any other source in this thieving world. In the end, one always got something else besides the bargain to carry away with one. For Petitjean knew all the gossip of the province; after dinner, when the stiff cider was working in his veins, he would be certain to tell all one wanted to know. Even Madame Le Mois, whose days were too busy in summer to include the daily reading of her newspaper, had grown dependent, in these her later years, on such sources of information as the peddler's garrulous tongue supplied. In the end she had found his talent for fiction quite as reliable as that of the journalists, besides being infinitely more entertaining, abounding in personalities which were the more racy, as the pedler felt himself to be exempt from that curse of responsibility, which, in French journalism, is so often a barrier to the full play of one's talent.

Therefore it was that Petitjean and his bright-eyed spouse were always made welcome at Dives.

"It goes well, Madame Jean? Ah, there you are. Well, hein, also? It is long since we saw you."

"Ah, madame, centuries, it is centuries since we were here. But what will you have? with the bad season, the rains, the banks failing, the—but you, madame, are well? And Monsieur Paul?" "Ah, ca va tout doucement Paul is well, the good God be praised, but I—I perish day by day" At which the entire court-yard was certain to burst into laughing protest. For the whole household of Guillaume le Conquerant was quite sure to be assembled about the great wheels of the pedler's wagon—only to look, not to buy, not yet. Petitjean, and his wife had not dined yet, and a pedler's hunger is something to be respected—one made money by waiting for the hour of digestion. The little crowd of maids, hostlers, cooks, and scullery wenches, were only here to whet their appetite, and to greet Petitjean. Nitouche, the head chef, put a little extra garlic in his sauces that day. But in spite of this compliment to their palate, the pedler and his wife dined in the smaller room off the kitchen;—Madame was desolated, but the salle-a-manger was crowded just now. One was really suffocated in there these days! Therefore it was that the two ate the herbaceous sauces with an extra relish, as those conscious of having a larger space for the play of vagrant elbows than their less fortunate brethren. The gossip and trading came later. On the edge of the fading daylight there was still time to see; the chosen articles could easily be taken into the brightly lit kitchen to be passed before the lamps. After the buying and bargaining came the talking. All the household could find time to spend the evening on the old benches; these latter lined the sidewalk just beneath the low kitchen casements. They had been here for many a long year.

What a history of Dives these old benches could have told! What troopers, and beggars, and cowled monks, and wayfarers had sat there!—each sitter helping to wear away the wood till it had come to have the depressions of a drinking-trough. Night after night in the long centuries, as the darkness fell upon the hamlet—what tales and confidences, and what murmured anguish of remorse, what cries for help, what gay talk and light song must have welled up into the dome of sky!

Once, as we sat within the court-yard, under the stars, a young voice sang out. It was so still and quiet every word the youth phrased was as clear as his fresh young voice.

"Tiens—it is Mathieu—he is singing Les Oreillers!" cried Monsieur Paul, with an accent of pride in his own tone.

The young voice sang on:

"J'arrive en ce pays De Basse Normandie, Vous dire une chanson, S'il plait la compagnie!"

"It is an old Norman bridal song," Monsieur Paul went on, lowering his voice. "One I taught a lot of young boys and lads last winter—for a wedding held here—in the inn."

Still the fresh notes filled the air:

"Les amours sont partis Dans un bateau de verre; Le bateau a casse a casse— Les amours sont parterre."

"How the old women laughed—and cried—at once! It was years since they had heard it—the old song. And when these boys—their sons and grandsons—sang it, and I had trained them well—they wept for pure delight."

Again the song went on:

"Ouvrez la porte, ouvrez! Nouvelle mariee, Car si vous ne l'ouvrez Vous serez accusee"

"I dressed all the young girls in old costumes," our friend continued, still in a whisper. "I ransacked all the old chests and closets about here. I got the ladies of the chateaux near by to aid me; they were so interested that many came down from Paris to see the wedding. It was a pretty sight, each in a different dress! Every century since the thirteenth was represented."

"Attendez a demain, La fraiche matinee, Quand mon oiseau prive Aura pris sa volee!"

Clear, strong, free rang the young tenor's voice—and then it broke into "Comment—tu dis que Claire est la?" whereat Monsieur Paul smiled.

"That will be the next wedding—what shall I devise for that? That will also be the ending of a long lawsuit. But he should have sung the last verse—the prettiest of all. Mathieu!" Paul lifted his voice, calling into the dark.

"Oui, Monsieur Paul!"

"Sing us the last verse—"

"Dans ce jardin du Roi A pris sa reposee, Cueillant le romarin La—vande—bouton—nee—"

The last notes were but faint vibrations, coming from a lengthening distance.

"Ah!" and Monsieur Paul breathed a sigh. "They don't care about singing. They are doing it all the time they are so much in love. The fathers' lawsuit ended only last month. They've waited three years— happy Claire—happy Mathieu!"



CHAPTER XVIII.

THE CONVERSATION OF PATRIOTS.

The world that found its way to the mayor's table at this early period of the summer season was largely composed of the class that travels chiefly to amuse others. The commercial gentlemen in France, however, have the outward bearing of those who travel to amuse themselves. The selling of other people's goods—it is surely as good an excuse as any other for seeing the world! Such an occupation offers an orator, one gifted in conversational talents—talents it would be a pity to see buried in the domestic napkin—a fine arena for display.

The French commercial traveller is indeed a genus apart; he makes a fetish of his trade; he preaches his propaganda. The fat and the lean, the tall and the little, the well or meanly dressed representatives of the great French houses who sat down to dine, as our neighbors or vis-a-vis, night after night, were, on the whole, a great credit to their country. Their manners might have been mistaken for those of a higher rank; their gifts as talkers were of such an order as to make listening the better part of discretion.

Dining is always a serious act in France. At this inn the sauces of the chef, with their reputation behind them, and the proof of their real excellence before one, the dinner-hour was elevated to the importance of a ceremony. How the petty merchants and the commercial gentlemen ate, at first in silence, as if respecting the appeal imposed by a great hunger, and then warming into talk as the acid cider was passed again and again! What crunching of the sturdy, dark-colored bread between the great knuckles! What huge helps of the famous sauces! What insatiable appetites! What nice appreciation of the right touch of the tricksy garlic! What nodding of heads, clinking of glasses, and warmth of friendship established over the wine-cups! At dessert everyone talked at once. On one occasion the subject of Gambetta's death was touched on; all the table, as one man, broke out into an effervescence of political babble.

"What a loss! What a death-blow to France was his death!" exclaimed a heavy young man in a pink cravat.

"If Gambetta had lived, Alsace and Lorraine would be ours now, without the firing of a gun!" added an elderly merchant at the foot of the table.

"Ah—h! without the firing of a gun they will come to us yet. I tell you, without the firing of a gun—unless we insist on a battle," explosively rejoined a fiery-hued little man sitting next to Monsieur Paul; "but you will see—we shall insist. There is between us and Germany an inextinguishable hate—and we must kill, kill, right and left!"

"Allons—allons!" protested the table, in chorus.

"Yes, yes, a general massacre, that is what we want; that is what we must have. Men, women, and children—all must fall. I am a married man—but not a woman or a child shall escape—when the time comes," continued the fiery-eyed man, getting more and more ferocious as he warmed with the thought of his revenge.

"What a monster!" broke in Madame Le Mois, her deep base notes unruffled by the spectacle of her bloodthirsty neighbor's violence; "you—to bayonet a woman with a child in her arms!"

"I would—I would—"

"Then you would be more cruel than they were. They treated our women with respect."

There was a murmur of assenting applause, at this sentiment of justice, from the table. But the fiery-eyed man was not to be put down.

"Oh, yes, they were generous enough in '71, but I should remember their insults of 1815!"

"Ancienne histoire—ca" said the mere, dismissing the subject, with a humorous wink at the table.

"As you see," was Monsieur Paul's comment on the conversation, as we were taking our after-dinner stroll in the garden—"as you see, that sort of person is the bad element in our country—the dangerous element—unreasoning, revengeful, and ignorant. It is such men as he who still uphold hatreds and keep the flame alive. It is better to have no talent at all for politics—to be harmless like me, for instance, whose worst vice is to buy up old laces and carvings."

"And roses—"

"Yes—that is another of my vices—to perpetuate the old varieties. They call me along our coast the millionnaire—of roses! Will you have a 'Marie Louise,' mademoiselle?"

The garden was as complete in its old time aspect as the rest of the inn belongings. Only the older, rarer varieties of flowers and rose stalks had been chosen to bloom within the beautifully arranged inclosure. Citronnelle, purple irises, fringed asters, sage, lavender, rose-peche, bachelor's-button, the d'Horace, and the wonderful electric fraxinelle, these and many other shrubs and plants of the older centuries were massed here with the taste of one difficult to please in horticultural arrangements. Our after-dinner walks became an event in our day. At that hour the press of the day's work was over, and Madame Mere or Monsieur Paul were always ready to join us for a stroll.

"For myself, I do not like large gardens," Monsieur Paul remarked, during one of these after-dinner saunters. "The monks, in the old days, knew just the right size a garden should be—small and sheltered, with walls—like a strong arm about a pretty woman—to protect the shrubs and flowers. One should enter the garden, also, by a gate which must click as it closes—the click tickles the imagination—it is the sound henceforth connected with silence, with perfumes and seclusion. How far away we seem now, do we not?—from the bustle of the inn court-yard—and yet I could throw a stone into it."

The only saunterers besides ourselves were the flamingo, who, cautiously, timorously picked his way—as if he were conscious he was only a bunch of feathers hoisted on stilts; the white parrot, who was wabbling across the lawn to a favorite perch in the leaves of a tropical palm; and the peacock, whose train had been spread with a due regard to effect across a bed of purple irises, with a view to annihilating the brilliancy of their rival hues.

The bit of sky framed by these four garden walls always seemed more delicate in tone than that which covered the open court-yard. The birds in the bushes had moments of melodious outbursts they did not, apparently, indulge in along the high-road. And what with the fading lights, the stars pricking their way among the palms, the scents of flowers, and the talk of a poet, it is little wonder that this twilight hour in the old garden was certain to be the most lyrical of the twenty-four.



CHAPTER XIX.

IN LA CHAMBRE DES MARMOUSETS.

"It is the winters, mesdames, that are hard to bear. They are long—they are dull. No one passes along the high-road. It is then, when sometimes the snow is piled knee-deep in the court-yard, it is then I try to amuse myself a little. Last year I did the Jumieges sculptures; they fit in well, do they not?"

It was raining; and Monsieur Paul was paying us an evening call. A great fire was burning in the beautiful Francois I. fireplace of our sitting-room, the famous Chambre des Marmousets. We had not consented that any of the lights should be lit, although the lovely little Louis XIV. chandelier and the antique brass sconces were temptingly filled with fresh candles. The flames of the great logs would suffer no rival illuminations; if the trunks of full-grown trees could not suffice to light up an old room, with low-raftered ceilings, and a mass of bric-a- brac, what could a few thin waxen candles hope to do?

On many other occasions we had thought our marvellous sitting-room had had exceptional moments of beauty. To turn in from the sunlit, open court-yard; to pass beneath, the vine-hung gallery; to lift the great latch of the low Gothic door and to enter the rich and sumptuous interior, where the light came, as in cathedral aisles, only through the jewels of fourteenth-century glass; to close the door; to sit beneath the prismatic shower, ensconced in a nest of old tapestried cushions, and to let the eye wander over the wealth of carvings, of ceramics, of Spanish and Normandy trousseaux chests, on the collection of antique chairs, Dutch porcelains, and priceless embroideries—all the riches of a museum in a living-room—such a moment in the Marmousets we had tested again and again with delectable results. At twilight, also, when the garden was submerged in dew, this old seigneurial chamber was a retreat fit for a sybarite or a modern aesthete. The stillness, the soft luxurious cushions, the rich dusk thickening in the corners, the complete isolation of the old room from the noise and tumult of the inn life, its curious, its delightful unmodernness, made this Marmouset room an ideal setting for any mediaeval picture. Even a sentiment tinctured with modern cynicism would, I think, have borrowed a little antique fervor, if, like the photographic negative our nineteenth-century emotionalism somewhat too closely resembles, in its colorless indefiniteness, the sentiment were sufficiently exposed, in point of time and degree of sensitiveness, to the charm of these old surroundings.

On this particular evening, however, the pattering of the rain without on the cobbles and the great blaze of the fire within, made the old room seem more beautiful than we had yet seen it. Perhaps the capture of our host as a guest was the added treasure needed to complete our collection. Monsieur Paul himself was in a mood of prodigal liberality; he was, as he himself neatly termed the phrase, ripe for confession; not a secret should escape revelation; all the inn mysteries should yield up the fiction of their frauds; the full nakedness of fact should be given to us.

"You see, cheres dames, it is not so difficult to create the beautiful, if one has a little taste and great patience. My inn—it has become my hobby, my pride, my wife, my children. Some men marry their art, I espoused my inn. I found her poor, tattered, broken-down, in health, if you will; verily, as your Shakespeare says of some country wench: 'a poor thing but mine own.'" Monsieur Paul's possession of the English language was scarcely as complete as the storehouse of his memory. He would have been surprised, doubtless, to learn he had called poor Audrey, "a pure ting, buttaire my noon!"

"She was, however," he continued, securely, in his own richer Norman, "though a wench, a beautiful one. And I vowed to make her glorious. 'She shall be famous,' I vowed, and—and—better than most men I have kept my vow. All France now has heard of Guillaume le Conquerant!"

The pride Monsieur Paul took in his inn was indeed a fine thing to see. The years of toil he had spent on its walls and in its embellishment had brought him the recompense much giving always brings; it had enriched him quite as much as the wealth of his taste and talent had bequeathed to the inn. Latterly, he said, he had travelled much, his collection of curios and antiquities having called him farther afield than many Frenchmen care to wander. His love of Delft had taken him to Holland; his passion for Spanish leather to the country of Velasquez; he must have a Virgin, a genuine fifteenth-century Virgin, all his own; behold her there, in her stiff wooden skirts, a Neapolitan captive. The brass braziers yonder, at which the courtiers of the Henris had warmed their feet, stamping the night out in cold ante chambers, had been secured at Blois; and his collection of tapestries, of stained glass, of Normandy brasses, and Breton carvings had made his own coast as familiar as the Dives streets.

"The priests who sold me these, madame," he went on, as he picked up a priest's chasuble, now doing duty as a table covering "would sell their fathers and their mothers. It is all a question of price."

After a review of the curios came the history of the human collection of antiquities who had peopled the inn and this old room.

Many and various had been the visitors who had slept and dined here and gone forth on their travels along the high-road.

The inn had had a noble origin; it had been built by no less a personage than the great William himself. He had deemed the spot a fitting one in which to build his boats to start forth for his modest project of conquering England. He could watch their construction in the waters of Dives River—that flows still, out yonder, among the grasses of the sea-meadows. For some years the Norman dukes held to the inn, in memory of the success of that clever boat-building. Then for five centuries the inn became a manoir—the seigneurial residence of a certain Sieur de Semilly. It was his arms we saw yonder, joined to those of Savoy, in the door panel, one of the family having married into a branch of that great house.

Of the famous ones of the world who had travelled along this Caen post-road and stopped the night here, humanly tired, like any other humble wayfarer, was a hurried visit from that king who loved his trade—Louis XI. He and his suite crowded into the low rooms, grateful for a bed and a fire, after the weary pilgrimage to the heights of Mont St. Michel. Louis's piety, however, was not as lasting in its physically exhaustive effects, as were the fleshly excesses of a certain other king—one Henri IV., whose over-appreciation of the oysters served him here, caused a royal attack of colic, as you may read at your pleasure in the State Archives in Paris—since, quite rightly, the royal secretary must write the court physician every detail of so important an event. What with these kingly travellers and such modern uncrowned kings as Puvis de Chavannes, Dumas, George Sand, Daubigny, and Troyon, together with a goodly number of lesser great ones, the famous little inn has had no reason to feel itself slighted by the great of any century. Of all this motley company of notabilities there were two whose visits seemed to have been indefinitely prolonged. There was nothing, in this present flowery, picturesque assemblage of buildings, to suggest a certain wild drama enacted here centuries ago. Nothing either in yonder tender sky, nor in the silvery foliage on a fair day, which should conjure up the image of William as he must have stood again and again beside the little river; nor of the fury of his impatience as the boats were building all too slowly for his hot hopes; nor of the strange and motley crew he had summoned there from all corners of Europe to cut the trees; to build and launch boats; to sail them, finally, across the strip of water to that England he was to meet at last, to grapple with, and overthrow, even as the English huscarles in their turn bore down on that gay Minstrel Taillefer, who rode so insolently forth to meet them, with a song in his throat, tossing his sword in English eyes, still chanting the song of Roland as he fell. None of the inn features were in the least informed with this great, impressive picture of its past. Yet does William seem by far the most realizable of all the personages who have inhabited the old house.

There was another visitor whose presence Monsieur Paul declared was as entirely real as if she, also, had only just passed within the court-yard.

"I know not why it is, but of all these great, ces fameux, Madame de Sevigne seems to me the nearest, in point of time. Her visit appears to have happened only yesterday. I never enter her room but I seem to see her moving about, talking, laughing, speaking in epigrams. She mentions the inn, you know, in her letters. She gives the details of her journey in full."

I, also, knew not why; but, later, after Monsieur Paul had left us, when he had shut himself out, along with the pattering raindrops, and had closed us in with the warmth and the flickering fire-light, there came, with astonishing clearness, a vision of that lady's visit here. She and her company of friends might have been stopping, that very instant, without, in the open court. I, also, seemed to hear the very tones of their voices; their talk was as audible as the wind rustling in the vines. In the growing stillness the vision grew and grew, till this was what I saw and heard:



TWO BANQUETS AT DIVES.



CHAPTER XX.

A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY REVIVAL.

Outside the inn, some two hundred years ago, there was a great noise and confusion; the cries of outriders, of mounted guardsmen and halberdiers, made the quiet village as noisy as a camp. An imposing cavalcade was being brought to a sharp stop; for the outriders had suddenly perceived the open inn entrance, with its raised portcullis, and they were shouting to the coachmen to turn in, beneath the archway, to the paved court-yard within.

In an incredibly short space of time the open quadrangle presented a brilliant picture; the dashing guardsmen were dismounting; the maids and lackeys had quickly descended from their perches in the caleches and coaches; and the gentlemen of the household were dusting their wide hats and lace-trimmed coats. The halberdiers, ranging themselves in line, made a prismatic grouping beneath the low eaves of the picturesque old inn. In the very middle of the court-yard stood a coach, resplendent in painted panels and emblazoned with ducal arms. About this coach, as soon as the four horses which drew the vehicle were brought to a standstill, cavaliers, footmen, and maids swarmed with effusive zeal. One of the footmen made a rush for the door: another let down the steps; one cavalier was already presenting an outstretched, deferential hand, while still another held forth an arm, as rigid as a post, for the use of the occupants of the ducal carriage.

Three ladies were seated within. Large and roomy as was the vehicle, their voluminous draperies and the paraphernalia of their belongings seemed completely to fill the wide, deep seats. The ladies were the Duchesse de Chaulnes, Madame de Kerman, and Madame de Sevigne. The faces of the Duchesse and of Madame de Kerman were invisible, being still covered with their masks, which, both as a matter of habit and of precaution against the sun's rays, they had religiously worn during the long day's journey. But Madame de Sevigne had torn hers off; she was holding it in her hand, as if glad to be relieved from its confinement.

All three ladies were in the highest possible spirits, Madame de Sevigne obviously being the leader of the jests and the laughter.

They were in a mood to find everything amusing and delightful. Even after they had left the coach and were carefully picking their way over the rough stones—walking on their high-heeled "mules" at best, was always a dangerous performance—their laughter and gayety continued in undiminished exuberance. Madame de Sevigne's keen sense of humor found so many things to ridicule. Could anything, for example, be more comical than the spectacle they presented as they walked, in state, with their long trains and high-heeled slippers, up these absurd little turret steps, feeling their way as carefully as if they were each a pickpocket or an assassin? The long line behind of maids carrying their muffs, and of lackeys with the muff-dogs, and of pages holding their trains, and the grinning innkeeper, bursting with pride and courtesying as if he had St. Vitus's dance, all this crowd coiling round the rude spiral stairway—it was enough to make one die of laughter. Such state in such savage surroundings!—they and their patch-boxes, and towering head-gears and trains, and dogs and fans, all crowded into a place fit only for peasants!

When they reached their bedchambers the ridicule was turned into a condescending admiration; they found their rooms unexpectedly clean and airy. The furniture was all antique, of interesting design, and though rude, really astonishingly comfortable. Beds and dressing-tables, mostly of Henry III's time, were elaborately canopied in the hideous crude draperies of that primitive epoch. How different were the elegant shapes and brocades of their own time! Fortunately their women had suitable hangings and draperies with them, as well, of course, as any amount of linen and any number of mattresses. The settees and benches would do very well, with the aid of their own hassocks and cushions, and, after all, it was only for a night, they reminded the other.

The toilet, after the heat and exposure of the day, was necessarily a long one. The Duchesse and Madame de Kerman had their faces to make up—all the paint had run, and not a patch was in its place. Hair, also, of this later de Maintenon period, with its elaborate artistic ranges of curls, to say nothing of the care that must be given to the coif and the "follette," these were matters that demanded the utmost nicety of arrangement.

In an hour, however, the three ladies reassembled, in the panelled lower room—in "la Chambre de la Pucelle." In spite of the care her two companions had given to repairing the damages caused by their journey, of the three, Madame de Sevigne looked by far the freshest and youngest. She still wore her hair in the loosely flowing de Montespan fashion; a style which, though now out of date, was one that exactly suited her fair skin, her candid brow, and her brilliant eyes. These latter, when one examined them closely, were found to be of different colors; but this peculiarity, which might have been a serious defect in any other countenance, in Madame de Sevigne's brilliant face was perhaps one cause of its extraordinarily luminous quality. Not one feature was perfect in that fascinatingly mobile face: the chin was a trifle too long for a woman's chin; the lips, that broke into such delicious curves when she laughed, when at rest betrayed the firmness of her wit and the almost masculine quality of her reasoning judgment. Even her arms and hands and her shoulders were "mal tailles" as her contemporaries would have told you. But what a charm in those irregular features! What a seductiveness in the ensemble of that not too-well- proportioned figure! What an indescribable radiance seemed to emanate from the entire personality of this most captivating of women!

As she moved about the low room, dark with the trembling shadows of light that flowed from the bunches of candles in the sconces, Madame de Sevigne's clear complexion, and her unpowdered chestnut curls, seemed to spot the room with light. Her companions, though dressed in the very height of the fashion, were yet not half as catching to the eye. Neither their minute waists, nor their elaborate underskirts and trains, nor their tall coffered coifs (the duchesse's was not unlike a bishop's mitre, studded as it was with ruby-headed pins), nor the correctness of these ladies' carefully placed patches, nor yet their painted necks and tinted eyebrows, could charm as did the unmodish figure of Madame de Sevigne—a figure so indifferently clad, and yet one so replete with its distinction of innate elegance and the subtle charm of her individuality.

With the entrance of these ladies dinner was served at once. The talk flowed on; it was, however, more or less restrained by the presence of the always too curious lackeys, of the bustling innkeeper, and the gentlemen of the household in attendance on the party. As a spectacle, the little room had never boasted before of such an assemblage of fashion and greatness. Never before had the air under the rafters been so loaded with scents and perfumes—these ladies seeming, indeed, to breathe out odors. Never before had there been grouped there such splendor of toilet, nor had such courtly accents been heard, nor such finished laughter. The fire and the candlelight were in competition which should best light up the tall transparent caps, the lace fichus, the brocade bodices, and the long trains. The little muff-dogs, released from their prisons, since the muffs were laid aside at dinner time, blinked at the fire, curling their minute bodies—clipped lion-fashion—about the huge andirons, as they snored to kill time, knowing their own dinner would come only when their mistresses had done.

After the dessert had been served the ladies withdrew; they were preceded by the ever-bowing innkeeper, who assured them, in his most reverential tones, that they would find the room opening on the other court-yard even warmer and more comfortable than the one they were in. In spite of the walk across the paved court-yard and the enormous height of their heels, always a fact to be remembered, the ladies voted to make the change, since by that means they could be assured the more entire seclusion. Mild as was the May air, Madame de Kerman's hand-glass hanging at her side was quickly lifted in the very middle of the open court-yard; she had scarcely passed the door when she had felt one of her patches blowing off.

"I caught it just in time, dear duchesse," she cried, as she stood quite still, replacing it with a fresh one picked from her patch-box, as the others passed her.

"The very best patch-maker I have found lives in the rue St. Denis, at the sign of La Perle des Mouches; have you discovered him, dear friend?" said the duchesse, as they walked on toward the low door beneath the galleries.

"No, dear duchesse, I fear I have not even looked for him—the science of patches I have always found so much harder than the science of living!" gayly answered Madame de Sevigne.

Madame de Kerman had now re joined them, and all three passed into la Chambre des Marmousets.



CHAPTER XXI.

THE AFTER-DINNER TALK OF THREE GREAT LADIES.

The three ladies grouped themselves about the fire, which they found already lighted. The duchesse chose a Henry II. carved aim chair, one, she laughingly remarked, quite large enough to have held both the King and Diana. A lackey carrying the inevitable muff-dogs, their fans, and scent-bottles, had followed the ladies; he placed a hassock at the duchesse's feet, two beneath the slender feet of Madame de Kerman, and, after having been bidden to open one of the casements, since it was still so light without, withdrew, leaving the ladies alone.

Although Madame de Sevigne had comfortably ensconced herself in one of the deep window seats, piling the cushions behind her, no sooner was the window opened than with characteristic impetuosity she jumped up to look out into the country that lay beyond the leaded glass. In spite of the long day's drive in the open air, her appetite for blowing roses and sweet earth smells had not been sated. Madame de Sevigne all her life had been the victim of two loves and a passion; she adored society and she loved nature; these were her lesser delights, that gave way before the chief idolatry of her soul, her adoration for her daughter.



As she stood by the open window, her charming face, always a mirror of her emotions, was suffused with a glow and a bloom that made it seem young again. Her eyes grew to twice their common size under the "wandering" eyelids, as her gaze roved over the meadows and across the tall grasses to the sea. A part of her youth was being, indeed, vividly brought back to her; the sight of this marine landscape recalled many memories; and with the recollection her whole face and figure seemed to irradiate something of the inward ardor that consumed her. She had passed this very road, through this same country before, long ago, in her youth, with her children. She half smiled at the remembrance of a description given of the impression produced by her appearance on the journey by her friend the Abbe Arnauld; he had ecstatically compared her to Latona seated in an open coach, between a youthful Apollo and a young Diana. In spite of the abbe's poetical extravagance, Madame de Sevigne recognized, in this moment of retrospect, the truth of the picture. That, indeed, had been a radiant moment! Her life at that time had been so full, and the rapture so complete—the rapture of possessing her children—that she could remember to have had the sense of fairly evaporating happiness. And now, the sigh came, how scattered was this gay group! her son in Brittany, her daughter in Provence, two hundred leagues away! And she, an elderly Latona, mourning her Apollo and her divine huntress, her incomparable Diana.

The inextinguishable name of youth was burning still, however, in Madame de Sevigne's rich nature. This adventure, this amazing adventure of three ladies of the court having to pass the night in a rude little Normandy inn, she, for one, was finding richly seasoned with the spice of the unforeseen; it would be something to talk of and write about for a month hence at Chaulnes and at Paris. Their entire journey, in point of fact, had been a series of the most delightful episodes. It was now nearly a month since they had started from Picardy, from the castle of Chaulnes, going into Normandy via Rouen. They had been on a driving tour, their destination being Rennes, which they would reach in a week or so. They had been travelling in great state, with the very best coach, the very best horses; and they had been guarded by a whole regiment of cavaliers and halberdiers. Every possible precaution had been taken against their being disagreeably surprised on their route. Their chief fear on the journey had been, of course, the cry common in their day of "Au voleur!" and the meeting of brigands and assassins; for, once outside of Paris and the police reforms of that dear Colbert, and one must be prepared to take one's life in one's hand. Happily, no such misadventures had befallen them. The roads, it is true, they had found for the most part in a horrible condition; they had been pitched about from one end of their coach to the other they might easily have imagined themselves at sea. The dust also had nearly blinded them, in spite of their masks. The other nuisances most difficult to put up with had been the swarm of beggars that infested the roadsides; and worst of all had been the army of crippled, deformed, and mangy soldiers. These latter they had encountered everywhere; their whines and cries, their armless, legless bodies, their hideous filth, and their insolent importunities, they had found a veritable pest.

Another annoyance had been the over-zealous courtesy of some of the upper middle-class. Only yesterday, in the very midst of the dust and under the burning noon sun, they had all been forced to alight, to receive the homage tendered the duchesse, of some thirty women and as many men. Each one of the sixty must, of course, kiss the duchesse's hand. It was really an outrage to have exposed them to such a form of torture! Poor Madame de Kerman, the delicate one of the party, had entirely collapsed after the ceremony. The duchesse also had been prostrated; it had wearied her more than all the rest of the journey. Madame de Sevigne alone had not suffered. She was possessed of a degree of physical fortitude which made her equal to any demand. The other two ladies, as well as she herself, were now experiencing the pleasant exhilaration which comes with the hour of rest after an excellent dinner. They were in a condition to remember nothing except the agreeable. Madame de Sevigne was the first to break the silence.

She turned, with a brisk yet graceful abruptness, to the two ladies still seated before the low fire. With a charming outburst of enthusiasm she exclaimed aloud:

"What a beauty, and youth, and tenderness this spring has, has it not?"

"Yes," answered the duchesse, smiling graciously into Madame de Sevigne's brilliantly lit face; "yes, the weather in truth has been perfect."

"What an adorable journey we have had!" continued Madame de Sevigne, in the same tone, her ardor undampened by the cooler accent of her friend—she was used to having her enthusiasm greeted with consideration rather than response. "What a journey!—only meeting with the most agreeable of adventures; not the slightest inconvenience anywhere; eating the very best of everything; and driving through the heart of this enchanting springtime!"

Her listeners laughed quietly, with an accent of indulgence. It was the habit of her world to find everything Madame de Sevigne did or said charming. Even her frankness was forgiven her, her tact was so perfect; and her spontaneity had always been accounted as her chief excellence; in the stifled air of the court and the ruelles it had been frequently likened to the blowing in of a fresh May breeze. Her present mood was one well known to both ladies.

"Always 'pretty pagan,' dear madame," smiled Madame de Kerman, indulgently. "How well named—and what a happy hit of our friend Arnauld d'Audilly! You are in truth a delicious—an adorable pagan! You have such a sense of the joy of living! Why, even living in the country has, it appears, no terrors for you. We hear of your walking about in the moonlight-you make your very trees talk, they tell us, in Italian—in Latin; you actually pass whole hours alone with the hamadryads!" There was just a suspicion of irony in Madame de Kerman's tone, in spite of its caressing softness; it was so impossible to conceive of anyone really finding nature endurable, much less pretending to discover in trees and flowers anything amusing or suggestive of sentiment!

But Madame de Sevigne was quite impervious to her friend's raillery. She responded, with perfect good humor:

"Why not?—why not try to discover beauties in nature? One can be so happy in a wood! What a charming thing to hear a leaf sing! I know few things more delightful than to watch the triumph of the month of May when the nightingale, the cuckoo, and the lark open the spring in our forests! And then, later, come those beautiful crystal days of autumn—days that are neither warm, nor yet are they really cold! And then the trees—how eloquent they can be made; with a little teaching they may be made to converse so charmingly. Bella cosa far aniente, says one of my trees; and another answers, Amor odit inertes. Ah, when I had to bid farewell to all my leaves and trees; when my son had to dispose of the forest of Buron, to pay for some of his follies, you remember how I wept! It seemed to me I could actually feel the grief of those dispossessed sylvans and of all those homeless dryads!"

"It is this, dear friend—this life you lead at Les Rochers—and your enthusiasm, which keep you so young. Yes, I am sure of it. How inconceivably young, for instance, you are looking this very evening! You and the glow out yonder make youth seem no longer a legend."

The duchesse delivered her flattering little speech with a caressing tone. She moved gently forward in her chair, as if to gain a better view of the twilight and her friend. At the sound of the duchesse's voice Madame de Sevigne again turned, with the same charming smile and the quick impulsiveness of movement common to her. During her long monologue she had remained standing; but she left the window now to regain her seat amid the cushions of the window. There was something better than the twilight and the spring in the air; here, within, were two delightful friends-and listeners; there was before her, also, the prospect of one of those endless conversations that were the chief delight of her life.

She laughed as she seated herself—a gay, frank, hearty little laugh—and she spread out her hands with the opening of her fan, as, with her usual vivacious spontaneity, her mood changed.

"Fancy, dear duchesse, the punishment that comes to one who commits the crime of looking young—younger than one ought! My son-in-law, M. de Grignan, actually avows he is in daily terror lest I should give him a father-in-law!"

All three ladies laughed gayly at this absurdity; the subject of Madame de Sevigne's remarrying had come to be a venerable joke now. It had been talked of at court and in society for nearly forty years; but such was the conquering power of her charms that these two friends, her listeners, saw nothing really extravagant in her son-in-law's fear; she was one of those rare women who, even at sixty, continue to suggest the altar rather than the grave. Madame de Kerman was the first to recover her breath after the laughter.

"Dear friend, you might assure him that after a youth and the golden meridian of your years passed in smiling indifference to the sighs of a Prince de Conti, of a Turenne, of a Fouquet, of a Bussy de Rabutin, at sixty it is scarcely likely that—"

"Ah, dear lady at sixty, when one has the complexion and the curls, to say nothing of the eyes of our dear enchantress, a woman is as dangerous as at thirty!" The duchesse's flattery was charmingly put, with just enough vivacity of tone to save it from the charge of insipidity. Madame de Sevigne bowed her curls to her waist.