we had driven half an hour, we saw dimly a huge object before us. It proved to be a hay-waggon, upset, and filling the middle of the road. The great highways of France, and we were on that from Havre to Rouen, are very wide, so we managed to grope our way round it. Soon after a voice hailed us from the road. It came from a man who had dropped his purse, and he politely requested us to get out and help him to find it; a request, which my driver, I must say, not with equal politeness of language, rejected. We then turned off into a bye road, being, according to the driver, about a league from the château. We passed through a long wood, trusting to the instinct of our horse, for in the darkness under the trees we could not see his tail, much less anything of the road. Directly after we had emerged from the wood we heard voices, and found again the path blocked up. This time it was an overturned corn-waggon, which completely filled it. The peasants who were employed about it, dragged our carriage up a slope into the field, and, when we had passed the waggon, dragged it down again. This was a rather dangerous manœuvre in the dark. They told us that we were a quarter of an hour from the château. We drove for a quarter of an hour, and for a quarter of an hour longer, and the path, as far as we could judge from its ruts and its stones, became worse and worse. It was difficult to suppose that it led to a gentleman's house. At length it seemed to end in a wood, and the driver admitted that we were lost. By this time, how 1850.] Château of St. Aubin. 149 ever, the moon had risen, though behind clouds, and it was a little lighter. The driver, who professed to know the road well by day, thought that he knew whereabouts the château lay, and we took a road which led in that direction. This part of Normandy is, à la française, all open field. If it had consisted, like the Tocqueville country, of inclosures and deep lanes, we must have resigned ourselves to pass the night where we were. The new path, however, ended in a ploughed field, and we turned back again. There was not a cottage to be seen, and I think that we should have wandered till daylight, if we had not met a labourer whom I pressed as a guide. He led us for above a mile across the field to the garden gate. Everybody but M. Anisson had gone to bed-the servant dressed himself and let us in, and M. Anisson was kind enough to come and drink tea with me. There is nobody in the château except M. and Madame Anisson, and their unmarried son and daughter. Wednesday, August 28.-The château is large and has nothing military. It is built of brick and stone and belongs to the age of Louis XIII. It contains three stories; the rooms all look to the garden front, south-east; the other front contains only a corridor on each floor. Early in the morning, bread and coffee are brought into the bedroom; at half past eleven there are short family prayers, at a quarter before twelve is the regular breakfast, and at seven dinner. The habits, in fact, of a century ago are continued; except that what then was called dinner is now called breakfast, and what they called supper is now called dinner. And except also, and it is an important exception, that they then prepared themselves for their twelve o'clock meal by full dress. Arthur Young, living in the country with the Rochefoucaulds, Liancourts, and other people of the highest fashion, bitterly laments having to put on silk stockings and to be bien poudré at noon. What is one fit for after that, he asks, but to gossip and play at cards? in fact these seem to have been their afternoon employments. The great want in this country is water-not indeed from the sky, for Jupiter Pluvius is very liberal, but on the earth. Our supply depends wholly on the rain, which is carried off from the eaves by pipes meeting in one great filter of sand, and thence passes into two reservoirs in the cellars. Thence it is pumped or carried over the rest of the house-that for drinking is driven by a forcing pump through another filter, and comes out soft and clear. These cisterns are cleaned out once in two years. They are never recollected to have been empty, or even to have wanted water. The peasants depend principally on ponds also filled by the rain. I asked if they drank such water, and was answered that nobody drinks water, except on very rare occasions or in coffee. Their constant beverage, and at all meals, is cider. The farmers and a few peasants have water-butts, filled from the roof. As we were walking after breakfast this morning, a girl of about twenty-four, in a monastic dress, pale, with 1850.] The Village Schoolmistress. 151 regular features and a sweet countenance and manner, met us, whom M. Anisson addressed as 'ma sœur.' She is the village schoolmistress. When he fixed himself here he found only one school for both boys and girls, kept by a man fitted for it neither by morals, nor knowledge, nor habits, but holding his appointment under the Minister of the Interior, and removable, if removable at all, only by legal proceedings. He resolved at least to rescue the girls from him; built a school-house and residence for a mistress, and obtained this girl from a neighbouring convent. Her mother lives near Dieppe in easy circumstances, her two sisters are well married, but she felt a vocation for conventual life, and obeyed it. She was going to call on Madame Anisson, but before we had finished our walk, she had finished her visit, for we found her at home in her school-house. She lives there alone on an income which M. Anisson calls nothing: a few sous a month from those among her scholars who are able and willing to pay, and what the Anissons give her : for she has nothing from her friends, and, as to the convent, she is not a dependent but a benefactress: out of her little pittance she saves something to carry to its funds. Every year all the nuns pass five or six weeks there en retraite, and she is going thither next week. The Anissons fear that she may never return, as she has an alarming cough and the worn look which often precedes cónsumption. Should she survive her mother she will have some fortune; but in all probability she will renounce it in · favour of her sisters, or give it to the convent-for though monastic vows are not enforced by law, they are scarcely ever abandoned. They are taken for five years, a longer engagement being illegal on the part of both maker and receiver, but constantly renewed. A nun who chose to quit her convent would be shunned and probably unable to marry tolerably. The post brought in the death of Louis Philippe. The Anissons seemed a good deal affected by it. M. Anisson knew Louis Philippe intimately. He had a conversation with him at Twickenham in 1816, which has ever since dwelt in his memory. Louis Philippe spoke with regret of the reactionary course which Louis XVIII. was taking, of his abandoning the tricolor, and of his subserviency to the priesthood. And yet,' he said, he is a man of talent and a man of liberal opinions; but as soon as you put a crown on a man's head it seems to fall over his head like a bandage. I myself, who venture to blame and to criticise, if I were tried should perhaps commit, not perhaps the same faults, but others quite as serious. I see all this with great pain, yet I cannot venture to whisper my disapprobation. But those who think that I wish to supplant my cousin, and many honest and intelligent men think so, know me very little. The position of a constitutional king is without doubt a very fine one, but that of a Prince of Wales or a Duke of Orleans is much happier. I have rank, wealth, consideration, everything in short except power, and power I do not wish for.' M. Anisson thinks that his prevailing passion was not vanity, or ambition, or avarice, but the desire to promote |