e to
bring your imagination into play, as very few vestiges of the old days
remain. I still get just as much fun out of Il y avait une fois, even
when the "once on a time" can only be conjured up with closed eyes.
Still, I can show you some dear little old chapels, and while I am
telling you about it you will probably hear the far-off, sad tolling of
a bell, and I shall say to you "Ca sonne a Bouleurs." It will be the
church bells at Bouleurs, a tiny, tree-shaded hamlet, on another
hilltop, from which, owing to its situation, the bells, which rarely
ring save for a funeral, can be heard at a great distance, as they have
rung over the valley for years. They sound so sad in the still air that
the expression, Ca sonne a Bouleurs, has come to mean bad luck. In all
the towns where the bell can be heard, a man who is having bad luck at
cards, or has made a bad bargain, or has been tricked in any way,
invariably remarks, "Ca sonne a Bouleurs."

I could show you something more modern in the way of historical
association. For example, from the road at the south side of my hill I
can show you the Chateau de la Haute Maison, with its mansard and Louis
XVI pavilions, where Bismarck and Favre had their first unsuccessful
meeting, when this hill was occupied by the Germans in 1870 during the
siege of Paris. And fifteen minutes' walk from here is the pretty
Chateau de Conde, which was then the home of Casimir-Perier, and if you
do not remember him as the President of the Republic who resigned rather
than face the Dreyfus case, you may remember him as the father-in-law of
Madame Simone, who unsuccessfully stormed the American theater, two
years ago.

You ask me how isolated I am. Well, I am, and I am not. My house
stands in the middle of my garden. That is a certain sort of isolation.
There is a house on the opposite side of the road, much nearer than I
wish it were. Luckily it is rarely occupied. Still, when it is, it is
over-occupied. At the foot of the hill--perhaps five hundred yards
away--are the tiny hamlet of Joncheroy and the little village of
Voisins. Just above me is the hamlet of Huiry--half a dozen houses.
You see that is not sad. So cheer up. So far as I know the commune has
no criminal record, and I am not on the route of tramps. Remember,
please, that, in those last winters in Paris, I did not prove immune to
contagions. There is nothing for me to catch up here--unless it be the
gayety with which the air