teaching lady
friends to ride bicycles, a lot of barking, yapping fox-terriers running
alongside. There is a lively cross-conversation going on from one side
of the street to the other, my own concierge and chauffeur contributing
largely. Of course my balcony is untenable, and I am obliged to sit
inside, until happily sleep descends upon them. They all vanish, and the
street relapses into perfect silence. I am delighted to find myself in
this quiet little Norman bathing-place, just getting known to the
French and foreign public.

It is hardly a village; the collection of villas, small houses, shops,
and two enormous hotels surrounding the etablissement seems to have
sprung up quite suddenly and casually in the midst of the green fields
and woods, shut in on all sides almost by the Forest of Ardennes, which
makes a beautiful curtain of verdure. There are villas dotted about
everywhere, of every possible style; Norman chalets, white and gray,
with the black crossbeams that one is so familiar with all over this
part of the country; English cottages with verandas and bow-windows;
three or four rather pretentious looking buildings with high perrons and
one or two terraces; gardens with no very pretty flowers, principally
red geraniums, some standing back in a nice little green wood, some
directly on the road with benches along the fence so that the
inhabitants can see the passers-by (and get all the dust of the roads).
But there isn't much passing even in these days of automobiles. There
are two trains from Paris, arriving at two in the afternoon and at
eleven at night. The run down from Paris, especially after Dreux, is
charming, almost like driving through a park. The meadows are
beautifully green and the trees very fine--the whole country very like
England in appearance, recalling it all the time, particularly when we
saw pretty gray old farmhouses in the distance--and every now and then a
fine Norman steeple.

There are two rival hotels and various small pensions and family houses.
We are staying at the Grand, which is very comfortable. There is a
splendid terrace overlooking the lake; rather an ambitious name for the
big pond, which does, however, add to the picturesqueness of the place,
particularly at night, when all the lights are reflected in the water.
The whole hotel adjourns there after dinner, and people walk up and down
and listen to the music until ten o'clock. After that there is a decided
falling off of th