pared, just as if you were
awaiting dinner in genteel society. Most Frenchmen of the day whom one
has heard of appear to have called at St. Jouin, and to have left their
_homages_. Each of them has turned a compliment with pen or pencil, and
you may see in a glass case on the parlor wall what Alexandre Dumas,
Fils, thought of the landlady's nose, and how several painters measured
her ankles.

Of course you must make this excursion in good company, and I affirm
that I was in the very best. The company prefers, equally of course, to
have its breakfast in the orchard in front of the house; which, if the
repast is good, will make it seem better still, and if it is poor, will
carry off its poorness. Clever innkeepers should always make their
victims (in tolerable weather) eat in the garden. I forget whether
Ernestine's breakfast was intrinsically good or bad, but I distinctly
remember enjoying it, and making everything welcome. Everything, that
is, save the party at the other table--the Paris actresses and the
American gentlemen. The combination of these two classes of persons,
individually so delightful, results in certain phenomena which seem less
in harmony with appleboughs and summer breezes than with the gas lamps
and thick perfumes of a _cabinet particulier_, and yet it was
characteristic of this odd mixture of things that Mlle. Ernestine,
coming to chat with her customers, should bear a beautiful infant on her
arm, and smile with artless pride on being assured of its filial
resemblance to herself. She looked decidedly handsome as she caressed
this startling attribute of quiet spinsterhood.

St. Jouin is close to the sea and to the finest cliffs in the world. One
of my companions, who had laden the carriage with his painting traps,
went off into a sunny meadow to take the portrait of a windmill, and I,
choosing the better portion, wandered through a little green valley with
the other. Ten minutes brought us to the edge of the cliffs, which at
this point of the coast are simply sublime. I had been thinking the
white sea-walls of Etretal the finest thing conceivable in this way, but
the huge red porphoritic-looking masses of St. Jouin have an even
grander character. I have rarely seen anything more picturesque. They
are strange, fantastic, out of keeping with the country, and for some
rather arbitrary reason suggested to me a Spanish or even African
landscape. Certain sun-scorched precipices in Spanish Sierras must have