et better deserved. But let us finish breakfast first, and then I
will tell you about our town and take you to see it."

He stopped talking every now and then while he slowly drank a glass of
wine which he gazed at affectionately as he replaced the glass on the
table.

It was amusing to see him, with a napkin tied around his neck, his cheeks
flushed, his eyes eager, and his whiskers spreading round his mouth as it
kept working.

He made me eat until I was almost choking. Then, as I was about to return
to the railway station, he seized me by the arm and took me through the
streets. The town, of a pretty, provincial type, commanded by its
citadel, the most curious monument of military architecture of the
seventh century to be found in France, overlooks, in its turn, a long,
green valley, where the large Norman cows graze and ruminate in the
pastures.

The doctor quoted:

"'Gisors, a town of 4,000 inhabitants in the department of Eure,
mentioned in Caesar's Commentaries: Caesaris ostium, then Caesartium,
Caesortium, Gisortium, Gisors.' I shall not take you to visit the old
Roman encampment, the remains of which are still in existence."

I laughed and replied:

"My dear friend, it seems to me that you are affected with a special
malady that, as a doctor, you ought to study; it is called the spirit of
provincialism."

He stopped abruptly.

"The spirit of provincialism, my friend, is nothing but natural
patriotism," he said. "I love my house, my town and my province because I
discover in them the customs of my own village; but if I love my country,
if I become angry when a neighbor sets foot in it, it is because I feel
that my home is in danger, because the frontier that I do not know is the
high road to my province. For instance, I am a Norman, a true Norman;
well, in spite of my hatred of the German and my desire for revenge, I do
not detest them, I do not hate them by instinct as I hate the English,
the real, hereditary natural enemy of the Normans; for the English
traversed this soil inhabited by my ancestors, plundered and ravaged it
twenty times, and my aversion to this perfidious people was transmitted
to me at birth by my father. See, here is the statue of the general."

"What general?"

"General Blaumont! We had to have a statue. We are not 'the proud people
of Gisors' for nothing! So we discovered General de Blaumont. Look in
this bookseller's window."

He drew me towards the bookstore, where about f