walks. I can, on a Sunday afternoon, in good weather, even take you to
the theater--what is more, to the theater to see the players of the
Comedie Francaise. It is only half an hour's walk from my house to
Pont-aux-Dames, where Coquelin set up his maison de retraite for aged
actors, and where he died and is buried. In the old park, where the du
Barry used to walk in the days when Louis XVI clapped her in prison on a
warrant wrung from the dying old king, her royal lover, there is an
open-air theater, and there, on Sundays, the actors of the Theatre
Francais play, within sight of the tomb of the founder of the retreat,
under the very trees--and they are stately and noble--where the du Barry
walked.

Of course I shall only take you there if you insist. I have outgrown
the playhouse. I fancy that I am much more likely to sit out on the
lawn and preach to you on how the theater has missed its mission than I
am--unless you insist--to take you down to the hill to listen to Moliere
or Racine.

If, however, that bores you,--it would me,--you can sit under the trees
and close your eyes while I give you a Stoddard lecture without the
slides. I shall tell you about the little walled town of Crecy, still
surrounded by its moat, where the tiny little houses stand in gardens
with their backs on the moat, each with its tiny footbridge, that pulls
up, just to remind you that it was once a royal city, with drawbridge
and portcullis, a city in which kings used to stay, and in which Jeanne
d'Arc slept one night on her way back from crowning her king at Rheims:
a city that once boasted ninety-nine towers. Half a dozen of these
towers still stand. Their thick walls are now pierced with windows, in
which muslin curtains blow in the wind, to say that to-day they are the
humble homes of simple people, and to remind you of what warfare was in
the days when such towers were a defense. Why, the very garden in which
you will be sitting when I tell you this was once a part of the royal
estate, and the last Lord of the Land was the Duke de Penthievre. I
thought that fact rather amusing when I found it out, considering that
the house I came so near to taking at Poigny was on the Rambouillet
estate where his father, the Duke de Toulouse, one of Louis XIV's
illegitimate sons, died, where the Duke de Penthievre was born, and
where he buried his naughty son, the Duke de Lamballe.

Of course, while I am telling you things like this you will hav