house for the vacation, so he asked
Josselin and Bussy-Rabutin. But Bussy couldn't go--and, to my
delight, I went instead.

That ride all through the sweet August night, the three of us on the
imperiale of the five-horsed diligence, just behind the conductor
and the driver--and freedom, and a full moon, or nearly so--and a
tremendous saucisson de Lyon (a l'ail, bound in silver paper)--and
petits pains--and six bottles of biere de Mars--and cigarettes ad
libitum, which of course we made ourselves!

The Lafertes lived in the Department of La Sarthe, in a delightful
country-house, with a large garden sloping down to a transparent
stream, which had willows and alders and poplars all along its both
banks, and a beautiful country beyond.

Outside the grounds (where there were the old brick walls, all
overgrown with peaches and pears and apricots, of some forgotten
mediaeval convent) was a large farm; and close by, a water-mill that
never stopped.

A road, with thick hedge-rows on either side, led to a small and
very pretty town called La Tremblaye, three miles off. And hard by
the garden gates began the big forest of that name: one heard the
stags calling, and the owls hooting, and the fox giving tongue as it
hunted the hares at night. There might have been wolves and
wild-boars. I like to think so very much.

M. Laferte was a man of about fifty--entre les deux ages; a retired
maitre de forges, or iron-master, or else the son of one: I forget
which. He had a charming wife and two pretty little daughters,
Jeanne et Marie, aged fourteen and twelve.

He seldom moved from his country home, which was called "Le Gue des
Aulnes," except to go shooting in the forest; for he was a great
sportsman and cared for little else. He was of gigantic stature--six
foot six or seven, and looked taller still, as he had a very small
head and high shoulders. He was not an Adonis, and could only see
out of one eye--the other (the left one, fortunately) was fixed as
if it were made of glass--perhaps it was--and this gave him a stern
and rather forbidding expression of face.

He had just been elected Mayor of La Tremblaye, beating the Comte de
la Tremblaye by many votes. The Comte was a royalist and not
popular. The republican M. Laferte (who was immensely charitable and
very just) was very popular indeed, in spite of a morose and gloomy
manner. He could even be violent at times, and then he was terrible
to see and hear. Of course his wife a