in France, about thirty years ago,
was in a fine old chateau standing high in pretty, undulating, wooded
country close to the forest of Villers-Cotterets, and overlooking the
great plains of the Oise--big green fields stretching away to the
sky-line, broken occasionally by little clumps of wood, with steeples
rising out of the green, marking the villages and hamlets which, at
intervals, are scattered over the plains, and in the distance the blue
line of the forest. The chateau was a long, perfectly simple, white
stone building. When I first saw it, one bright November afternoon, I
said to my husband as we drove up, "What a charming old wooden house!"
which remark so astonished him that he could hardly explain that it
was all stone, and that no big houses (nor small, either) in France
were built of wood. I, having been born in a large white wooden house
in America, couldn't understand why he was so horrified at my
ignorance of French architecture. It was a fine old house, high in the
centre, with a lower wing on each side. There were three
drawing-rooms, a library, billiard-room, and dining-room on the ground
floor. The large drawing-room, where we always sat, ran straight
through the house, with glass doors opening out on the lawn on the
entrance side and on the other into a long gallery which ran almost
the whole length of the house. It was always filled with plants and
flowers, open in summer, with awnings to keep out the sun; shut in
winter with glass windows, and warmed by one of the three caloriferes
of the house. In front of the gallery the lawn sloped down to the
wall, which separated the place from the highroad. A belt of fine
trees marked the path along the wall and shut out the road completely,
except in certain places where an opening had been made for the view.

We were a small party for such a big house: only the proprietor and
his wife (old people), my husband and myself. The life was very
simple, almost austere. The old people lived in the centre of the
chateau, W.[1] and I in one of the wings. It had been all fitted up
for us, and was a charming little house. W. had the ground-floor--a
bedroom, dressing-room, cabinet de travail, dining-room, and a small
room, half reception-room, half library, where he had a large
bookcase filled with books, which he gave away as prizes or to school
libraries. The choice of the books always interested me. They were
principally translations, English and American--Walter