articles from this point to Paris, than to contend
with the current and to tread its shoals. In addition to the two houses
named, however, it has six or eight respectable abodes between the
street and the river, one of which is our own.

This place became a princely residence about the year 1800, since which
time it has been more or less frequented as such down to the 4th June,
1814, the date of the memorable charter.[21] Madame de Pompadour
possessed the chateau in 1745, so you see it has been "dust to dust"
with this place, as with all that is frail.

[Footnote 21: The chateau of St. Ouen, rather less than two centuries
since, passed into the possession of the Duc de Gesvre. Dulaure gives
the following,--a part of a letter from this nobleman,--as a specimen of
the education of a _duc_ in the seventeenth century:--"Monsieur, me
trouvant oblige de randre une bonne party de largan que mais enfant ont
pris de peuis qu'il sont au campane, monsieur, cela moblige a vous
suplier tres humblemant monsieur de me faire la grasse de commander
monsieur quant il vous plera que lon me pay la capitenery de Monsaux
monsieur vous asseurant que vous mobligeres fort sansiblement monsieur
comme ausy de me croire avec toute sorte de respec, etc." This beats
Jack Cade out and out. The great connetable Anne de Montmorency could
not write his name, and as his signature became necessary, his secretary
stood over his shoulder to tell him when he had made enough _pies de
mouche_ to answer the purpose.]

The village of St. Ouen, small, dirty, crowded and unsavoury as it is,
has a _place_, like every other French village. When we drove into it,
to look at the house, I confess to having laughed outright, at the idea
of inhabiting such a hole. Two large _portes-cocheres_, however, opened
from the square, and we were admitted, through the best-looking of the
two, into a spacious and an extremely neat court. On one side of the
gate was a lodge for a porter, and on the other, a building to contain
gardeners' tools, plants, etc. The walls that separate it from the square
and the adjoining gardens are twelve or fourteen feet high, and once
within them, the world is completely excluded. The width of the grounds
does not exceed a hundred and fifty feet; the length, the form being
that of a parallelogram, may be three hundred, or a little more; and yet
in these narrow limits, which are planted _a l'Anglaise_, so well is
everything contrived, that we appear