s in that rare but agreeable dilemma of not knowing what to
do with his game or his gun.

In a wine country the _vendange_ is certainly the most exciting and
merriest season of the year--it is a succession of delightful _fetes_ in
the open air, of repasts amongst the vines and under the shade of the
peach-trees, riding-parties in the forest, whose echoes are awakened by
the melancholy notes of the horn, water-parties on the lakes, dances in
the field and round the wine-press, &c.

Every _chateau_ is full to overflowing in Le Morvan during the month of
August,--bands of Parisians, Picards, and Normans, acquaintances
scarcely made, friends, friends'-friends, with their wives, children,
dogs, nurses, and luggage arrive each hour and by every road. Every
family is invaded, beds are doubled, plates are not to be found,--there
is only one glass for two, one knife for three; the servants, stupified
and astonished, know not how to reply or which way to turn themselves;
the cooks, half-roasted and lost amidst an army of sauce-pans, know not
what they are doing; they put mustard into the _meringues_, cruets of
vinegar in the soup--every one is on the laugh, except however the heads
of families, who rendered almost crazy by this tide of human beings
always rising, by the bell of the _porte cochere_ always ringing, pass
on from one to the other the new arrivals, with a note as follows:

"Mons. de G.... presents his compliments to Mons. de V...., and has the
honour to inform him that not possessing in his house one bed or one
arm-chair that is not occupied, he has the pleasure of sending him two
Normans and three Parisians."

P.S. "The two Normans are first-rate waltzers, the Parisians perfect
singers." The reply will perhaps be couched in the following strain:

"Mons. de V.... presents his compliments to Mons. de G...., and has the
honour to inform him that being himself under the necessity of sleeping
in his cellar, he cannot, though most anxious to oblige him, receive the
two Norman dancers and the three Parisian warblers." Thus it sometimes
happens that very charming, elegant, and sensitive gentlemen, who under
ordinary circumstances would be very difficult to please, are obliged
to sleep in a barn or loft, on a very nice bed of clean straw, with a
dark lantern to light them there, and the luxury of a truss of hay for a
pillow.

The peasants, generally speaking, do not witness the arrival of these
visitors with much pleasu