ine!

Never in my life--anywhere, under any circumstances--have I been so well
taken care of. I have a femme de menage--a sort of cross between a
housekeeper and a maid-of-all-work. She is a married woman, the wife of
a farmer whose house is three minutes away from mine. My dressing-room
window and my dining-room door look across a field of currant bushes to
her house. I have only to blow on the dog's whistle and she can hear.
Her name is Amelie, and she is a character, a nice one, but not half as
much of a character as her husband--her second. She is a Parisian. Her
first husband was a jockey, half Breton, half English. He died years
ago when she was young: broke his neck in a big race at Auteuil.

She has had a checkered career, and lived in several smart families
before, to assure her old age, she married this gentle, queer little
farmer. She is a great find for me. But the thing balances up
beautifully, as I am a blessing to her, a new interest in her monotonous
life, and she never lets me forget how much happier she is since I came
here to live. She is very bright and gay, intelligent enough to be a
companion when I need one, and well-bred enough to fall right into her
proper place when I don't.

Her husband's name is Abelard. Oh, yes, of course, I asked him about
Heloise the first time I saw him, and I was staggered when the little
old toothless chap giggled and said, "That was before my time." What do
you think of that? Every one calls him "Pere Abelard," and about the
house it is shortened down to "Pere." He is over twenty years older than
Amelie--well along in his seventies. He is a native of the commune--was
born at Pont-aux-Dames, at the foot of the hill, right next to the old
abbaye of that name. He is a type familiar enough to those who know
French provincial life. His father was a well-to-do farmer. His mother
was the typical mother of her class. She kept her sons under her thumb
as long as she lived. Pere Abelard worked on his father's farm. He had
his living, but never a sou in his pocket. The only diversion he ever
had was playing the violin, which some passer in the commune taught him.
When his parents died, he and his brothers sold the old place at
Pont-aux-Dames to Coquelin, who was preparing to turn the historic old
convent into a maison de retraite for aged actors, and he came up here
on the hill and bought his present farm in this hamlet, where almost
every one is some sort of