id not take much notice of them, but happily not so much as to
direct their whole thought and energy to fleecing them. It seemed as if
the people of Ault had merely arranged a bathing place for the purpose
of deriving a little amusement out of the strangers, not in order to
make a living out of them, that being quite unnecessary, as their
comfortable figures, good clothes, and well-filled shops could testify.

Wilhelm took up his quarters in the Hotel de France, situated just
where the High Street swept round the side of the church. As the house
was separated from the sea by the whole opposite row of houses, one
only caught a glimpse of it as a narrow, glittering streak across the
intervening roofs from the second-floor windows. The view from the
front windows was the more remarkable. They looked out upon the
churchyard which lay behind the Gothic cathedral. Not that there was
anything depressing in the sight; it made, on the contrary, a cheerful
impression, with its carefully tended flower beds and magnificent old
trees, which almost hid the modest headstones they overshadowed, and in
whose branches count less singing birds had built their nests, while
noisy troops of children played under them at all hours of the day.

Wilhelm directed his steps at once to this churchyard, where, beside
the modern iron crosses, there were marble headstones showing dates
that went back to the seventeenth century. In the oldest as well as the
newest inscriptions the same name occurred over and over again,
speaking well for the settled habits of the population. And, according
to the inscriptions, most of those buried here had lived to be eighty
or ninety years of age. Had Ault been a professedly fashionable bathing
place, one might have been tempted to think that this churchyard, with
its cheering records in stone and iron of the longevity of the natives,
had been set down in the very center of the town to encourage the
visitors.

The Hotel de France recommended itself by extreme cleanliness, but
otherwise it was very simple. The rooms contained only such furniture
as was absolutely necessary, the dining-room was bare of decoration,
and therefore happily free of those gruesome colored prints which the
commercial traveller delights to sow broadcast over the unsuspecting
country towns. Only the so-called salon boasted the luxury of a cottage
piano, a polished table, a few cane chairs, and a looking-glass over
the chimneypiece, on which l