societe_ on the
cliffs. That's the place up there, the house with the flag above all
the others. I walked up there this morning. He has a tennis court.
Looking up the gravel walk, I saw him sitting on the veranda. That's
M. Ernest Daudet's place just under him in the trees--_mais voila_;
there he is."

Towards three o'clock in the afternoon, indeed, almost daily, M. de
Blowitz has an amiable habit. He walks down with members of his
family, and the guests who are staying with him, to the pretty
bathing-cabins, in front of which stretches an improvised awning, and,
picturesque in his colored flannels, he sits himself down with a cigar
to watch the bathers. He, the most distinguished of European critics,
is here and now the object of many curious and admiring observations.
He holds here a little court on the shingle beach. Brightly dressed
women gather to him from every point of the compass; while he who has
his emissaries in every quarter of the world, and whose subtle
influence is felt at each episode of the European movement, gives
himself up with pardonable indulgence--under the ample umbrella--to
the pretty trifles of glib women's charm and chatter. Before he has
enjoyed enough, and obedient to one of those harmless devices in which
well-taught men of the world often indulge, he retires from this
charmed and, as I can affirm, charming circle, and climbs to the great
villa on the cliff. There are letters to be written and telegrams to
be sent to Paris, and perhaps an article meditated during the
afternoon.

[Illustration: M. DE BLOWITZ IN HIS STUDY.]

The doors of the _Lampottes_ are wide open upon the great veranda, and
the winds of the channel enter there, warmed from blowing over the
upland grass. The life within is the ideally tranquil existence of an
English country gentleman. Where did this cosmopolite, who really has
no English roots, learn the system? For the hospitality of England can
scarcely be translated with full flavor into any other idiom. The
_schloss_ of Germany or of the Tyrol, the _chateau_ of France, have
never, within my experience of lazy summers, afforded just the same
delightful background as the country house of England. Yet to the
_Lampottes_ the peculiar air has somehow been conjured. All the
country round about this house is Norman, and therefore English--that
is, dense, rich, familiar--so that the English illusion is complete.
But no reader of M. de Blowitz's correspondence in the "Time