lish,
about baths. I treated the subject in language which I am sure was
dark to her. I owned a bath of my own and gave my servant orders to
bring up sufficient water every morning, whatever Madame said. He
obeyed me, and I washed myself, more or less. Madame took her defeat
well. She collected quantities of old blankets, rugs, sacks, and bed
quilts. She spread them over the parts of the floor where my bath was
placed. I tried, honourably, to splash as little as possible and
always stood on a towel while drying myself.

After all Madame had reason on her side. Water is bad for polished
floors, and it is very doubtful whether the human skin is any the
better for it. Most of our rules of hygiene are foolish. We think a
daily bath is wholesome. We clamour for fresh air. We fuss about
drains. Madame never opened a window and had a horror of a _courant_
_d'air_. The only drain connected with the house ran into the well
from which our drinking water came. Yet Madame had celebrated her
golden wedding and was never ill. Monsieur and Marie were even older
and could still thoroughly enjoy a _jour de fete_.

Madame had a high sense of duty towards her guests. She and Marie
cooked wonderful meals for us and even made pathetic efforts to
produce _le pudding_, a thing strange to them which they were
convinced we loved. She mended our clothes and sewed on buttons. She
pressed us, anxiously, to remain _tranquille_ for a proper period
after meals.

She did her best to teach us French. She tried to induce me--she
actually had induced one of my predecessors--to write French
exercises in the evenings. She made a stringent rule that no word of
English was ever to be spoken at meals. I think that this was a real
self-denial to Madame. She knew a little English--picked up sixty
years before when she spent one term in a school near Folkestone. She
liked to air it; but for the sake of our education she denied
herself. We used to sit at dinner with a dictionary--English-French
and French-English--on the table. We referred to it when stuck, and
on the whole we got on well in every respect except one.

Madame had an eager desire to understand and appreciate English
jokes, and of all things a joke is the most difficult to translate. A
fellow-lodger once incautiously repeated to me a joke which he had
read in a paper. It ran thus: "First British Soldier (in a French
Restaurant): 'Waiter, this 'am's 'igh. 'Igh 'am. _Compris?_' Second
British So