o much!' An old farmer who sate sipping his _petit
verre_ near me, explained to me that the man was a resident of Barisis,
a little village not very far off, the dwellers in which from time
immemorial have been known as 'the pigs of Barisis.' 'Try and pick up a
husband on the way,' another of the stable lads called out after a
pretty girl who paused with a companion, as she went by the place, to
chat with him--'try and pick up a husband on the way and we'll keep the
wedding feast here!' 'Ah bah!' the damsel rejoined in a merry voice,
'more marryers come your way than ours. Tie up the first one that comes
and keep him for me!' This quickness to catch and return the ball
certainly shows a greater natural or acquired alertness of mind among
these Picard peasants than is commonly found in people of the same
condition in rural England.

The country all the way from Coucy to Laon is one continuous garden, and
Laon itself is pre-eminently a city set on a hill. The Chateau de Coucy
stands upon its pinnacle of rock, like a knight in armour, with folded
arms, looking loftily down upon the world, conscious of his strength,
and calmly awaiting attack. The fortress-city of Laon, a fortress from
the earliest Roman days, looks out from the promontory on which it
stands, over the wide expanse of plain beyond and around it, like an
advanced sentinel, watchful and alert.

You go up to it by long flights of steps, as in the case of so many
high-perched Italian towns, and the fine winding carriage-way which has
been constructed around the hill, commands, from beneath the beautiful
trees by which it is shaded, a series of the finest imaginable views. It
has suffered much, of course, from war, and not a little from the
revolutionists. But its magnificent cathedral and the ancient palace of
the bishop-dukes, now occupied by the courts of justice, have fared
better than many other monuments. For some time past, however, the
cathedral has been undergoing repairs, which is as much as to say that
the interior is practically hidden from the eye by a maze of scaffolds
and hoardings and ladders. Mr. Ruskin somewhere complains, not wholly
without reason, that 'the French are always doing something to their
cathedrals,' and the complaint is in order now both as to Laon and as to
Nantes. No one can tell when the fine recumbent statue of Raoul de
Coucy, who fell at Mansourah by the side of St.-Louis, will again be
visible at Laon, or the matchless tomb