hevillons ungrudgingly harboured them. It was difficult to
obtain supplies; but the two waifs were still welcome to the best, sat
down daily with the family to table, and at the due intervals were
supplied with clean napkins, which they scrupled to employ. Madame
Chevillon observed the fact and reprimanded them. But they stood firm;
eat they must, but having no money they would soil no napkins.

VI

Nemours and Moret, for all they are so picturesque, have been little
visited by painters. They are, indeed, too populous; they have manners
of their own, and might resist the drastic process of colonisation.
Montigny has been somewhat strangely neglected; I never knew it
inhabited but once, when Will H. Low installed himself there with a
barrel of _piquette_, and entertained his friends in a leafy trellis
above the weir, in sight of the green country and to the music of the
falling water. It was a most airy, quaint, and pleasant place of
residence, just too rustic to be stagey; and from my memories of the
place in general, and that garden trellis in particular--at morning,
visited by birds, or at night, when the dew fell and the stars were of
the party--I am inclined to think perhaps too favourably of the future
of Montigny. Chailly-en-Biere has outlived all things, and lies dustily
slumbering in the plain--the cemetery of itself. The great road remains
to testify of its former bustle of postilions and carriage bells; and,
like memorial tablets, there still hang in the inn room the paintings of
a former generation, dead or decorated long ago. In my time, one man
only, greatly daring, dwelt there. From time to time he would walk over
to Barbizon, like a shade revisiting the glimpses of the moon, and after
some communication with flesh and blood return to his austere hermitage.
But even he, when I last revisited the forest, had come to Barbizon for
good, and closed the roll of the Chaillyites. It may revive--but I much
doubt it. Acheres and Recloses still wait a pioneer; Bourron is out of
the question, being merely Grez over again, without the river, the
bridge, or the beauty; and of all the possible places on the western
side, Marlotte alone remains to be discussed. I scarcely know Marlotte,
and, very likely for that reason, am not much in love with it. It seems
a glaring and unsightly hamlet. The inn of Mother Antonie is
unattractive; and its more reputable rival, though comfortable enough,
is commonplace. Marlotte has