In and Out of Three Normandy Inns

and his garden. Chief among these changes was the surprising discovery

e to yourselves, all but the top floor; the people who own it keep that to live in. There's a garden of t

repasts. But as men have been known to admire the still life in wifely character, and then repented their choice, marrying peace only to court dissension, so we, inco

: A DEPARTURE

'deux pauvres malheureux' with this villa still on their hands, and here they are almost 'touching June,' as they put it. They also gave me to understand that only the finest flowers of the aristocracy had had the h

t in to inspect our possessions. They received us with such suave courtesy, that I was

ouse or the garden first? would they permit their trunks to be sent for? Monsieur Fouchet, meanwhile, was making a brave second to his wife's bustling welcome; he was rubbing his hands vigorously, a somewhat suspicious action in a Frenchman, I have had occasion to notice, after the completion of a bargain. Nature had cast this mild-eyed individual for the part of accompanyist in the c

ith no reserve of whispered delicacy, when we expressed regret at monsieur's detention below stairs; a partiall

t's seizure, his illness, his convalescence, and present physical condition-a condition which appeared to be bristling with the tragedy of danger, "un vrai drame d'anxiété"-was graphically conveyed to us. The horrors of the long winter also, so sad for a Parisian-"si triste pour la Parisienne, ces hivers de province"-together with the miseries of her ow

our landlady's opulent figure, we found a difficult acrobatic mental feat. She presented to the eye outlines and features that could only be likened, in point of prosperity, to a Dutch landscape. Like certain of the mediaeval saints presented by the earlier delineators of t

and windows. The drama of her life was forgotten for the moment in the conscio

Geoffrin's salon in full session, with a poet of the period transporting the half-moon grouped listeners about him to the point of tears, were evidences of the refined tastes of our landlady in the arts; only a sentimentalist would have hung that picture in her salon. Other decorations further proved her as belonging to both worlds. The chintzes gay with garlands of roses, with whi

ut compared to these others, ours was as a rose of Sharon blooming in the midst of little deserts. Renard had been entirely right about this particular bit of earth attached to our villa. It was

h us to believe did those mediaeval connoisseurs of comfort, when, with sandalled feet, they paced their own convent garden-walks. Fouchet was a broken-down shopkeeper; but somewhere hidden within, there lurked the soul of a Maecenas; he knew how to arrange a feast-of roses. The garden was a bit of greensward, not much larger than a pocket handkerchief; but the grass had the right emerald hue, and one's feet sank into the rich turf as into the velvet of an oriental rug. Small as was the enclosure, between the espaliers and the flower-beds serpentined minute paths of glistening pebbles. Nothing which belonged to a garden had been forgotten, not even a pine from the tropics, and a bench under the pine that was just large enough for

something like friendship. Monsieur Fouchet was always to be found there,

it is my pride and my consolation." At the

bath of literature? Besides, Horace was bitten by the modern rabies: he was as restless as an American. When at Rome was he not always sighing for his Sabine farm, and when at the farm always regretting Rome? But this harmless, in

dark," was Renard's comment, when we discussed our l

est in madame's breast, that was clear; her smooth, white brow was the sign of a rose-leaf conscience; th

e very odor of sanctity; the cure had a pipe in her kitchen, with something more sustaining, on certain bright afternoons. Although she was daily announcing to us her approaching dissolution-"I die, mesdames-I die of ennui"-it seemed to me there were still signs, at

er race, that race kings have knighted for their powers in dealing mightily with their weaker neighbors. Madame, it is true, was only a woman, and Villerville was somewhat slimly populated. But in imitation of her remote feudal lords, she also fell upon the passi

no more thought of honesty or shame than a--. The word was never uttered. The mère's insult was drowned in a storm of voices? for there came a loud protest from the group of neighbors. Madame Fouchet, meanwhile, was sustaining her own role with great dignity. Her attitude of self-control could only have been learned in a school where insult was an habitual weapon. She smiled, an infuriating, exasperating, successful smile. She showed a set of defiant white teeth, and to her proud white throat she gave a boastful curve. Was it her fault if ces dames knew what comfort and cleanliness were? if they preferred "des chambres garnies avec go?t, vraiment artistiques"-to rooms fit

aised"-she hadn't come here to the provinces to learn her rights-to be taught her alphabet. Mère Mouchard, forso

ey would peel the skin off your back! They would sel

am a Norman, mais je ne m'en fiche pas! Most of my life, however, I've lived in Paris, thank God!" She lifted her head as she spoke, and swept her hands about her waist to adjust the broad belt, an action pregn

rden, her husband was meek

's ménage. He was perpetually to be seen in the court-yard, at the back of the house, washing dogs, or dishes, in a costume in which the greatest economy of cloth compatible with decency had been triumphantly solved. His wife ran the house, and he ran the errands, an arrangement which, app

es of activity, in the world and in the field, has become an expert in the art of knowing her man; she has not worked by his side, under the burn of the noon sun, or in the cimmerian darkness of the shop-rear, counting the pennies, for nothing. In exchanging her illusions for the bald front of fact, man himself has had to p

est is man

epted her world, in other words, as she finds it, with a philosopher's shrug. But the philosopher is lined with the logician; for this system of life has accomplished the miracle of making its women logical; they have grasped the subtleties of inductive reasoning. Marriage, for example, they know is entered into solely on the principle of mutual benefit; it is therefore a partnership, bon; now, in partnerships sentiments and the emot

hat Mouchard

without knowing it, was no more amazed than would Mère Mouchard have been had you announced to her that she was a logician;

tness. There were no tender illusions which would suffer, in seeing the husband allotted to her, probably by her parents and the dot system, relegated to the ignominy of passing his days washing dishes-dishes which sh