to see
them we generally found them in short black skirts, and when they were
no longer very young, with black caps, but they always had handsome
silk dresses, velvet cloaks, and hats with flowers and feathers when
they came to see us. Some of them took the cup of tea we offered, but
they didn't know what to do with it, and sat on the edge of their
chairs, looking quite miserable until we relieved them of the burden
of the tea-cup. Mme. A. was rather against the tea-table; she
preferred the old-fashioned tray handed around with wine and cakes,
but I persuaded her to try, and after a little while she acknowledged
that it was better to have the tea-table brought in. It made a
diversion; I got up to make the tea. Someone gave me a chair, someone
else handed the cups. It made a little movement, and was not so stiff
as when we all sat for over an hour on the same chairs making
conversation. It is terrible to have to make conversation, and
extraordinary how little one finds to say. We had always talked easily
enough at home, but then things came more naturally, and even the
violent family discussions were amusing, but my recollection of these
French provincial visits is something awful. Everybody so polite, so
stiff, and the long pauses when nobody seemed to have anything to say.
I of course was a novelty and a foreign element--they didn't quite
know what to do with me. Even to Mme. A., and I grew very fond of her,
and she was invariably charming to me, I was something different. We
had many talks on every possible subject during our long drives, and
also in the winter afternoons. At first I had my tea always upstairs
in my own little salon, which I loved with the curtains drawn, a
bright wood-fire burning, and all my books about; but when I found
that she sat alone in the big drawing-room, not able to occupy herself
in any way, I asked her if I might order my tea there, and there were
very few afternoons that I didn't sit with her when I was at home. She
talked often about her early married life--winters in Cannes and in
Paris, where they received a great deal, principally Protestants, and
I fancy she sometimes regretted the interchange of ideas and the
brilliant conversation she had been accustomed to, but she never said
it. She was never tired of hearing about my early days in America--our
family life--the extraordinary liberty of the young people, etc. We
often talked over the religious question, and though we were both
P