arance of being lost; and the houses were scattered about so
irregularly, that it was difficult to know which was the best point to
make for. The road studiously avoided the scattered houses, and the
_Mairie_ seemed especially difficult to find. When at length it was
found, the maire, like the queen in the poets, was in the kitchen; and
he sat affably on the end of a bench and read the letter of
introduction aloud, asking me, at the conclusion, how was our friend
Dugravel, a man amazing in many ways. When I confessed that I had only
made the acquaintance of the amazing man the night before, and
therefore did not feel competent to give any reliable account of the
state of his health, beyond the fact that he seemed to be in
excellent spirits, the maire looked upon me evidently with great
respect, as having won so far upon a great character like Dugravel in
so short a time, and determined to accompany me himself. Meantime, we
must drink some kirsch. The maire was a young man, spare and vehement.
He talked with a headlong impetuosity which caused him to be always
hot, and his hair limp and errant; and at the end of each sentence
there were so many laggard halves of words to come out together, with
so little breath to bring them out, that he eventuated in a stuttering
scream. His clothes were of such a description, that the most
speculative Israelite would not have gone beyond copper for his
wardrobe, all standing. There were two women in the house, to whom he
was exceedingly imperious: one of them received his orders and his
vehemence with a certain amount of defiance, but the other was subdued
and obedient, and I believe her to have been the mayoress. He poured
himself and his household at my feet, knocked a child one way and his
wife another, and, from the air with which he dragged off the
tablecloth they had laid, and ordered a better, and swept away the
glasses because they were not clean enough--which in itself was
sufficiently true,--and screamed for poached eggs for monsieur, and
then impetuously ate them himself--I fancy that he might have been
taught to play Petrucio with success.

When we had sat for a quarter of an hour or so, a heavy-looking young
man, in fustian clothes and last year's linen, came into the room, and
was introduced as the communal schoolmaster. We shook hands with much
impressment on the strength of the similarity of our professions, and
the maire explained that the new arrival acted also as his