ry
cheerful afterpiece. There is a charming industry practised there, and
practised in charming conditions. Follow the bright little quay down the
river till you get quite out of the town and reach the point where the
road beside the Loire becomes sinuous and attractive, turns the corner
of diminutive headlands and makes you wonder what is beyond. Let not
your curiosity induce you, however, to pass by a modest white villa
which overlooks the stream, enclosed in a fresh little court; for here
dwells an artist--an artist in faience. There is no sort of sign, and
the place looks peculiarly private. But if you ring at the gate you will
not be turned away. You will, on the contrary, be ushered upstairs into
a parlour--there is nothing resembling a shop--encumbered with specimens
of remarkably handsome pottery. The ware is of the best, a careful
reproduction of old forms, colours, devices; and the master of the
establishment is one of those completely artistic types that are often
found in France. His reception is as friendly as his work is ingenious;
and I think it is not too much to say that you like the work better
because he has produced it. His vases, cups and jars, lamps, platters,
_plaques_, with their brilliant glaze, their innumerable figures, their
family likeness and wide variations, are scattered through his occupied
rooms; they serve at once as his stock-in-trade and as household
ornament. As we all know, this is an age of prose, of machinery, of
wholesale production, of coarse and hasty processes. But one brings away
from the establishment of the very intelligent M. Ulysse the sense of a
less eager activity and a greater search for perfection. He has but a
few workmen and he gives them plenty of time. The place makes a little
vignette, leaves an impression--the quiet white house in its garden on
the road by the wide, clear river, without the smoke, the bustle, the
ugliness, of so much of our modern industry. It struck me as an effort
Mr. Ruskin might have inspired and Mr. William Morris--though that be
much to say--have forgiven.

[Illustration]

Chapter v

[Chambord]

The second time I went to Blois I took a carriage for Chambord, and came
back by the Chateau de Cheverny and the forest of Russy--a charming
little expedition, to which the beauty of the afternoon (the finest in a
rainy season that was spotted with bright days) contributed not a
little. To go to Chambord you cross the Loire, leave it