have a pretty little old place
not very far from Villers-sur-Mer, where we went sometimes for
sea-bathing. The house is an ordinary square white stone building, a
fine terrace with a flight of steps leading down to the garden on one
side. The park is delightful--many splendid old trees. Until a few years
ago there were still some that dated since Louis XIV. The last one of
that age--a fine oak, with wide spreading branches--died about two years
ago, but they cannot make up their minds to cut it down. I advised them
to leave the trunk standing--(I think, by degrees, the branches will
fall as they are quite dead)--cover it with ivy or a vine of some kind,
and put a notice on it of the age of the tree.

The house stands high, and they have splendid views--on one side, from
the terrace, a great expanse of green valley looking toward Falaise--on
the other, the sea--a beautiful, blue summer sea, when we were there the
other day.

We went over from Villers to breakfast. It was late in the season, the
end of September--one of those bright days one sometimes has in
September, when summer still lingers and the sun gives beautiful mellow
tints to everything without being strong enough to make one feel the
heat. The road was lovely all the way, particularly after we turned off
the high road at the top of the Houlgate Hill. We went through countless
little Norman lanes, quite narrow, sometimes--between high green banks
with a hedge on top, and the trees meeting over our heads--so narrow
that I wondered what would happen if we met another auto. We left the
sea behind us, and plunged into the lovely green valley that runs along
back of the coast line. We came suddenly on the gates of the chateau,
rather a sharp turn. There was a broad avenue with fine trees leading up
to the house--on one side, meadows fenced off with white wooden palings
where horses and cows were grazing--a pretty lawn before the house with
beds of begonias, and all along the front, high raised borders of red
geranium which looked very well against the grey stone.

We found a family party, Comte and Comtesse d'Y----, their daughter and
a governess. We went upstairs (a nice wooden staircase with broad
shallow steps) to an end room, with a beautiful view over the park,
where we got out of all the wraps, veils, and glasses that one must have
in an open auto if one wishes to look respectable when one arrives, and
went down at once to the hall where the family was wait