running
curtsey at the door, very graceful, such as I have never seen another
person make.

The room was darker when she was gone; but Yvon cried to me I must see
the armory, and the chapel, and a hundred other sights. I followed him
like a child, my eyes very round, I doubt not, and staring with all my
might. The armory was another of the long halls or corridors that ran
along the sides of the courtyard. Here were weapons of all kinds, but
chiefly swords; swords of every possible make and size, some of great
beauty, others clumsy enough, that looked as if bears should handle
them. I had never held a sword in my hand,--how should I?--but Yvon
vowed I must learn to fence, and told some story of an ancestor of mine
who was the best swordsman in the country, and kept all comers at bay in
some old fight long ago. I took the long bit of springy steel, and found
it extraordinary comfortable to the hand. Practice with the fiddle-bow
since early childhood gave, I may suppose, strength and quickness to the
turn of my wrist; however it was, the marquis cried out that I was born
for the sword; and in a few minutes again cried to know who had taught
me tricks of fence. Honesty knows, I had had no teaching; only my eye
caught his own motions, and my hand and wrist answered instantly, being
trained to ready obedience. I felt a singular joy in this exercise,
Melody. In grace and dexterity it equals the violin; with this
difference, which keeps the two the width of the world apart, that the
one breeds trouble and strife, while the other may, under Providence,
soothe human ills more than any other one thing, save the kindly sound
of the human voice.

Make the best defence I could, it was not long before Yvon sent my foil
flying from my hand; but still he professed amazement at my ready
mastering of the art, and I felt truly that it was natural to me, and
that with a few trials I might do as well as he.

Next I must see the chapel, very ancient, but kept smart with candles
and crimson velvet cushions. I could not warm to this, feeling the four
plain walls of a meeting-house the only thing that could enclose my
religious feelings with any comfort; and these not to compare with a
free hillside, or the trees of a wood when the wind moves in them. And
then we went to the stables, and the gardens, laid out very stately, and
his sister's own rose garden, the pleasantest place in the whole, or so
I thought.

So with one thing and another,