on her front portico--big and
little, and some of them oddly shaped. She hunted them in wood and
field. When she found a nest she had it moved carefully after
nightfall, under a bit of netting, and fastened somewhere about the
gables. Around the Hermitage there were many withered boughs and
briers holding cones of wrought fibre, each a citadel of these
uniformed soldiers of the air and the poisoned arrow. They were
assembled in colonies of yellow, white, blue, and black wasps, and
white-faced hornets. She had no fear of them, and, indeed, no one
of the household was ever stung to my knowledge. I have seen her
stand in front of her door and feed them out of a saucer. There
were special favorites that would light upon her palm, overrunning
its pink hollow and gorging at the honey-drop.

"They will never sting," she would say, "if one does not declare
the war. To strike, to make any quick motion, it gives them anger.
Then, mon cher ami! it is terrible. They cause you to burn, to
ache, to make a great noise, and even to lie down upon the ground.
If people come to see me, if I get a new servant, I say: 'Make to
them no attention, and they will not harm you.'"

In the house I have seen her catch one by the wings on a window
and, holding it carefully ask me to watch her captive--sometimes a
a great daredevil hornet, lion-maned--as he lay stabbing with his
poison-dagger.

"Now," said she, "he is angry; he will remember. If I release him
he will sting me when I come near him again. So I do not permit
him to live--I kill him."

Then she would impale him and invite me to look at him with the
microscope.

One day the baroness went away to town with the young ladies. I
was quite alone with the servants. Father Joulin of the chateau
came over and sat awhile with me, and told me how he had escaped
the Parisian mob, a night in the Reign of Terror. Late in the
afternoon I walked awhile in the grove with him. When he left I
went slowly down the trail over which I had ridden. My strength
was coming fast. I felt like an idle man, shirking the saddle,
when I should be serving my country. I must to my horse and make
an end to dallying. With thoughts like these for company, I went
farther than I intended. Returning over the bushy trail I came
suddenly upon--Louison! She was neatly gowned in pink and white.

"Le diable!" said she. "You surprise me. I thought you went
another way."

"Or you would not have taken