nced. I was in hopes to see real country life, the
regular course of chateau existence, in a family quietly domesticated on
their own property. I looked forward to a peep at that _vie intime_
of Flemish household, of which all I knew was gathered from a Wenix
picture, and I wanted to see the thing in reality. The good vrow, with
her high cap and her long waist, her pale features lit up with eyes of
such brown as only Van Dyck ever caught the colour of; the daughters,
prim and stately, with their stiff, quaint courtesy, moving about the
terraced walks, like figures stepping from an ancient canvas, with
bouquets in their white and dimpled fingers, or mayhap a jess-hawk
perched upon their wrist; the Mynheer Baron, a large and portly Fleming,
with a slouched beaver and a short trim moustache, deep of voice, heavy
of step, seated on a grey Cuyp-like horse, with a flowing mane and a
huge tassel of a tail, napping lazily his brawny flanks, or slapping
with heavy stroke the massive jack-boots of his rider--such were my
notions of a Dutch household. The unchanged looks of the dwellings,
which for centuries were the same, in part suggested these thoughts. The
quaint old turrets, the stiff and stately terraces, the fosse, stagnant
and sluggish, the carved tracery of the massive doorway, were all as we
see them in the oldest pictures of the land; and when the rind looks so
like, it is hard to imagine the fruit with a different flavour.

It was then with considerable regret I learned that I should see
the family _en gala_; that I had fallen upon a time of feasting and
entertainment. Had it not been too late, I should have beaten my
retreat, and taken up my abode for another day with the cure of Givet;
as it was, I resolved to make my visit as brief as possible, and take to
the road with all convenient despatch.

As we neared the chateau, the Walloon remembered a number of apologies
with which the count charged him to account for his not having gone
himself to fetch me, alleging the claims of his other guests, and the
unavoidable details which the forthcoming _ouverture de la chasse_
demanded at his hands. I paid little attention to the mumbled and broken
narrative, interrupted by imprecations on the road and exhortations to
the horses; for already we had entered the precincts of the demesne,
and I was busy in noting down the appearance of the place. There was,
however, little to remark. The transition from the wide forest to the
pa