from the commume of Bonnebosq, some miles away, a spirited young fellow,
heart and soul in the fight, with the news that a story was putting
about all over the canton that M. Pierre de Witt had decided, at the
last moment, not to stand, and that, on the strength of this invention,
the nomination of Dr. ---- would be urged.

The polling had been fixed by the Prefect to begin in all the communes
at 7 A.M., and to close at 6 P.M. No time was, therefore, to be lost in
getting out a formal contradiction of this invention of the enemy, and
the vigorous young volunteer from Bonnebosq had lost no time. He roused
the candidate, got his instructions, and, before the polls were opened,
his men were all over the canton at work. In the course of the day I
drove over with M. Pierre de Witt to Bonnebosq, where we found the
mother of this energetic young politician, a typical Norman mother, full
of sense and fire, quietly proud of the activity and intelligence of her
son, and quite as much in the day's work as he. 'Not a pretty trick,'
she said, 'to play with Dr.----. He ought to be ashamed of it--and I am
sure he is,' she added, with a droll twinkle in her eye, 'for it has
turned out very badly! He will just be beaten like plaster. It would
have been cleverer to behave like a decent man!' Bonnebosq had a very
lively, cheery aspect on that Sunday afternoon. It is a busy prosperous
little place, with about a thousand inhabitants. The village church, a
new and very handsome French ogival building, most creditable to the
architect, has just been built at an expense of several hundred thousand
francs by a Catholic lady of the canton, and the people are very proud
of it. It struck me that at Bonnebosq the outlook for a moral harmony
between Frenchmen of divers religious communions contending together for
equal rights and well-ordered liberty was decidedly better than the
outlook for a 'moral unity' of France to be promoted by the
authoritative suppression of all private initiative in the education of
the French people. The traditions of the Norman race do not tend kindly
towards a system under which the individual is to wither that the State
may be more and more!

As Mayor of the commune of St.-Ouen-le-Pin, M. Conrad de Witt had a busy
day of it on Sunday, July 28. The holding of elections on Sunday is a
tradition in France. Two elections were to be made--one of a
Councillor-General and the other of a District Councillor. Under the
laws