of the Duchesse Anne at Nantes.

Here, as in the region around Chauny and Coucy, I was struck with the
extreme good-nature and simplicity of the people. Through the narrow,
old-fashioned streets went the town-crier with his bell, calling
'Attention! attention! attention!' announcing an auction sale of
furniture after the old custom which existed in some old American towns
quite down to the middle of the present century.

The people were at their trades in the street, as in the Italian towns,
shoemakers hammering at their lasts, ironworkers banging and thumping
away. When I had found the house of a gentleman whom I wished to see, in
the beautiful old cathedral close, and had rung in vain a dozen times at
the bell, a courteous passer-by paused, and asked me if I wished to find
M.----. 'Eh!' he said, 'the house is shut up because he is in the
country for the day. I think he will be here to-morrow; but if you will
come with me I will show you a little inn not far from here where I know
you will find his coachman, who can tell you exactly when he will
return.'

How long would a stranger have to ring at the door of a house in an
English cathedral town before it would occur to anybody passing to stop
and thus enlighten him?

With all their kindness and good-nature, however, the people of Laon are
not lukewarm in politics. I found a hairdresser, the local Figaro, a
raging Boulangist. 'He had served in Tonkin; he had seen, with his own
eyes seen the soldiers robbed and starved and left to die. He had seen,
with his own eyes seen the Government people taking huge "wine-pots"
from the natives. It was _infecte_! And the governor Richaud, whom they
called back to France because he wished to expose the way in which his
predecessor had taken thousands of francs and a diamond belt from the
king of Cambodia, Norodom. I had surely heard of that?'

I certainly had heard of that, for all France rang with the exposure
made of it in the Chamber of Deputies--that is to say, all France rang
with it for a couple of days.

'Yes! that is true. Paris forgets everything in a day, and Monsieur is
speaking of Paris; but here in Laon we do not forget; Monsieur will see.
Was it natural, I ask, Monsieur, that of all the people on board of the
ship which was bringing back M. Richaud to France--he, only he, and his
valet, his Chinese valet--I ask was it natural only they two should on
the ocean have the cholera, and die? Was it natural? And if they