cimens in corduroys and thick-nailed shoes,
having begun life as garcons de ferme (ploughboys). They were all
intelligent, well up in politics, and expressed themselves very well,
but I think, on the whole, they were pleased when Mme. A. and I
withdrew and they went into the gallery for their coffee and cigars.
Mme. A. was extraordinarily easy--talked to them all. They came in
exactly the same sort of equipage, a light, high, two-wheeled trap
with a hood, except the Mayor of La Ferte, our big town, who came in
his victoria.

I went often with W. to some of the big farms to see the
sheep-shearing and the dairies, and cheese made. The farmer's wife in
France is a very capable, hard-working woman--up early, seeing to
everything herself, and ruling all her carters and ploughboys with a
heavy hand. Once a week, on market day, she takes her cheeses to the
market town, driving herself in her high gig, and several times I have
seen some of them coming home with a cow tied to their wagon behind,
which they had bought at the market. They were always pleased to see
us, delighted to show anything we wanted to see, offered us
refreshment--bread and cheese, milk and wine--but never came to see me
at the chateau. I made the round of all the chateaux with Mme. A. to
make acquaintance with the neighbours. They were all rather far off,
but I loved the long drives, almost always through the forest, which
was quite beautiful in all seasons, changing like the sea. It was
delightful in midsummer, the branches of the big trees almost meeting
over our heads, making a perfect shade, and the long, straight, green
alleys stretching away before us, as far as we could see. When the
wood was a little less thick, the afternoon sun would make long
zigzags of light through the trees and trace curious patterns upon the
hard white road when we emerged occasionally for a few minutes from
the depths of the forest at a cross-road. It was perfectly still, but
summer stillness, when one hears the buzzing and fluttering wings of
small birds and insects, and is conscious of life around one.

The most beautiful time for the forest is, of course, in the autumn.
October and November are lovely months, with the changing foliage, the
red and yellow almost as vivid as in America, and always a foreground
of moss and brown ferns, which grow very thick and high all through
the forest. We used to drive sometimes over a thick carpet of red and
yellow leaves, hardly hear