a flying-machine ere long, so, with no new worlds to
conquer, one might do worse in the way of pleasurable travel than to
explore the waterways of France.

Maistre wrote his "Voyage Autour de Ma Chambre" and Karr his "Voyage
Autour de Mon Jardin," hence any one who really wants to do something
similar might well make the tour of the Ile de France by water. It
can be done, and would be a revelation of novelty, if one would do it
and write it down.

For the moment we were bound up the Oise; we had passed Vernon and
Giverny, sitting snug on the hillside by the mouth of the Ept, where
we knew there were countless Americans, artists _and others_, sitting
in Gaston's garden or playing tennis on a sunburnt field beside the
road. Foolish business that, with a river like the Seine so near at
hand, and because it was the custom at Giverny, a custom grown to be
a habit, which is worse, we liked not the place, in spite of its
other undeniable charms.

We put in for lunch at La Roche-Guyon, a trim little town lying close
beneath the Renaissance chateau of the La Rochefoucauld's. There are
two waterside hotels at La Roche-Guyon, beside the ugly wire-rope
bridge, but we knew them of old, and knew they were likely to be full
of an unspeakable class of Parisian merrymakers. There may be others
who patronize these delightfully situated riverside inns, but the
former predominate in the season. Out of season it may be quite
different.

We hunted out a little cafe in the town, whose _patron_ we knew, and
prevailed upon his good wife to give us our lunch _en famille_, which
she did and did well.

It was _tres bourgeois_, but that was what we wanted, and, after a
couple of hours eating and lolling about and playing with the cats
and talking to the parrot,--a Martinique parrot who knew some
English,--we took to the river again, and, after passing the locks at
Bonnieres, arrived at Mantes at five o'clock.

The nights draw in quickly, even in the early days of September, and
we were bound to push on, if we were to reach Triel that night. We
could have reached it, but were delayed at a lock, while it emptied
itself and half a score of downriver barges, and, spying a gem of a
riverside restaurant at Meulan, overhanging the very water itself,
and hung with great golden orange globes of light (so-called Japanese
lanterns, and nothing more), we were sentimentally enough inclined to
want to dine with such Claude Melnotte accessories. This we