nt, but the little thing was quiet enough, came and rubbed
itself against its master's legs and played quite happily with the
dogs. We heard afterward that they were obliged to kill it. It grew
fierce and unmanageable, and no one would come near the place.

* * * * *

I took Henrietta with me sometimes when I had a distant visit to pay;
an hour and a half's drive alone on a country road where you never
meet anything was rather dull. We went one cold December afternoon to
call upon Mme. B., the widow of an old friend and colleague of W.'s.
We were in the open carriage, well wrapped up, and enjoyed the drive
immensely. The country looked beautiful in the bright winter sunshine,
the distant forest always in a blue mist, the trees with their
branches white with "givre" (hoarfrost), and patches of snow and ice
all over the fields.

For a wonder we didn't go through the forest--drove straight away from
it and had charming effects of colour upon some of the thatched
cottages in the villages we passed through; one or two had been mended
recently and the mixture of old brown, bright red and glistening white
was quite lovely.

We went almost entirely along the great plains, occasionally small
bits of wood and very fair hills as we got near our destination. The
villages always very scattered and almost deserted--when it is cold
everybody stays indoors--and of course there is no work to be done on
the farms when the ground is hard frozen. It is a difficult question
to know what to do with the men of all the small hamlets when the real
winter sets in; the big farms turn off many of their labourers, and as
it is a purely agricultural country all around us there is literally
nothing to do. My husband and several of the owners of large estates
gave work to many with their regular "coupe" of wood, but that only
lasts a short time, and the men who are willing to work but can find
nothing drift naturally into cafes and billiard saloons, where they
read cheap bad papers and talk politics of the wildest description.

We found our chateau very well situated on the top of a hill, a good
avenue leading up to the gate, a pretty little park with fine trees at
the back, the tower of the village church just visible through the
trees at the end of the central alley. It was hardly a chateau--half
manor, half farm. We drove into a large courtyard, or rather farmyard,
quite deserted; no one visible anywhere; the doo