est. Being travellers ourselves in a small
way, we would fain have seen these other travellers alight.

The spectacle was over by the time we gained the top of the hill. All
the gold had withered out of the sky, and the balloon had disappeared.
Whither? I ask myself; caught up into the seventh heaven? or come safely
to land somewhere in that blue uneven distance, into which the roadway
dipped and melted before our eyes? Probably the aeronauts were already
warming themselves at a farm chimney, for they say it is cold in these
unhomely regions of the air. The night fell swiftly. Roadside trees and
disappointed sightseers, returning though the meadows, stood out in
black against a margin of low red sunset. It was cheerfuller to face the
other way, and so down the hill we went, with a full moon, the colour of
a melon, swinging high above the wooded valley, and the white cliffs
behind us faintly reddened by the fire of the chalk kilns.

The lamps were lighted, and the salads were being made in Origny
Sainte-Benoite by the river.

ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE

THE COMPANY AT TABLE

Although we came late for dinner, the company at table treated us to
sparkling wine. "That is how we are in France," said one. "Those who sit
down with us are our friends." And the rest applauded.

They were three altogether, and an odd trio to pass the Sunday with.

Two of them were guests like ourselves, both men of the north. One
ruddy, and of a full habit of body, with copious black hair and beard,
the intrepid hunter of France, who thought nothing so small, not even a
lark or a minnow, but he might vindicate his prowess by its capture. For
such a great, healthy man, his hair flourishing like Samson's, his
arteries running buckets of red blood, to boast of these infinitesimal
exploits, produced a feeling of disproportion in the world, as when a
steam-hammer is set to cracking nuts. The other was a quiet, subdued
person, blond and lymphatic and sad, with something the look of a Dane:
"_Tristes tetes de Danois!_" as Gaston Lafenestre used to say.

I must not let that name go by without a word for the best of all good
fellows now gone down into the dust. We shall never again see Gaston in
his forest costume--he was Gaston with all the world, in affection, not
in disrespect--nor hear him wake the echoes of Fontainebleau with the
woodland horn. Never again shall his kind smile put peace among all
races of artistic men, and make the Englishm