countrymen are conversing in this key,
the air rings with their clamour. They sing in the same lusty fashion;
not through closed lips, as is the custom of English singers, but
rolling out the notes with volcanic energy from the deep craters of
their throats. When our admirable waiter--who is also our best
friend--frees his soul in song as he is setting the table, the walls
of the dining-room quiver and vibrate. By five o'clock in the morning
every one except ourselves is on foot and out of doors. We might as
well be, for it is custom, not sleep, which keeps us in our beds.
The hay wagons are rolling over the bridge, the farmhands are going
to work, the waiter, in an easy undress, is exchanging voluble
greetings with his many acquaintances, the life of the town has
begun.

The ordinary week-day life, I mean, for on Sundays the market people
have assembled by four, and there are nights when the noises never
cease. It is no unusual thing to be awakened, an hour or two after
midnight, by a tumult so loud and deep that my first impression is
one of conspiracy or revolution. The sound is not unlike the hoarse
roar of Sir Henry Irving's admirably trained mobs,--the only mobs
I have ever heard,--and I jump out of bed, wondering if the President
has been shot, or the Chamber of Deputies blown up by malcontents.
Can these country people have heard the news, as the shepherds of
Peloponnesus heard of the fall of Syracuse, through the gossiping
of wood devils, and, like the shepherds, have hastened to carry the
intelligence? When I look out of my window, the crowd seems small
for the uproar it is making. Armand, the waiter, who, I am convinced,
merely dozes on a dining-room chair, so as to be in readiness for
any diversion, stands in the middle of the road, gesticulating with
fine dramatic gestures. I cannot hear what is being said, because
everybody is speaking at once; but after a while the excitement dies
away, and the group slowly disperses, shouting final vociferations
from out of the surrounding darkness. The next day when I ask the
cause of the disturbance, Armand looks puzzled at my question. He
does not seem aware that anything out of the way has happened; but
finally explains that "quelques amis" were passing the hotel, and
that Madame must have heard them stop and talk. The incident is
apparently too common an occurrence to linger in his mind.

As for the Amboise dogs, I do not know whether they really possess
a supern