birds of the air never build their nests in these
trees--why do they rarely rest and never ring there? Behind La
Pauline--so close, indeed, that the little chapel stands in the grey
hush of the trees, guarded, of course, by a sentinel circle of
cypresses--rise the olive terraces and stretch up, tier above tier,
till the pines are reached. Below the grey house the valley opens out
like a fan, and far away to the south the rugged crags of Roquebrune
stand out against a faint blue haze, which is the Mediterranean.

No better example of Peace on Earth is to be found than La Pauline
after sunset, at which time the olive groves are a silver
fairyland--when the chapel bell tinkles in vain for the faithful to
come to vespers--when the stout old placid cure sits down
philosophically in the porch to read the office to himself, knowing
well that a hot day in the vineyards turns all footsteps homewards.

When the ladies are in residence at the chateau, it is a different
matter. Then, indeed, the cure lays aside his old soutane and dons
that fine new clerical habit presented to him by Mademoiselle Lucille
at the time of her first communion, when the Bishop of Frejus came to
Draguignan, and the whole valley assembled to do him honour there.

The ladies came, as we have said, in December, and at the gate the
cure met them as usual--making there, as was his custom, a great
hesitation as to kissing Lucille, now that she was a demoiselle of the
great world, having--the rogue!--shaved with extraordinary care for
that very purpose, a few hours earlier. Indeed, it is to be feared
that the good cure did not always present so cleanly an appearance as
he did on the arrival of the ladies. Here the family lived a quiet
life among the peasants, who loved them, and Lucille visited them in
their cottages, taking what simple hospitality they could offer her
with a charm and appetite unrivalled, as the parishioners themselves
have often told the writer. In these humble homes she found children
with skins as white, with hair as fair and bright, as her own, and if
the traveller wander so far from the beaten track, he can verify my
statement. For in Var, by some racial freak--which, like all such
matters, is in point of fact inexplicable--a large proportion of the
people are of fair or ruddy complexions.

Had the Vicomtesse desired it, the neighbourhood offered society of a
loftier, and, as some consider, more interesting, nature, but that
lady did