uries, but with an air of modern
comfort and neatness about the doors and windows that seemed more in
keeping than the moat and towers with the habits of the present day.
The other curtain had been thrown down years before,--how or why nobody
could tell me, but not improbably in some of the domestic wars which
fill and defile the annals of mediaeval Europe. In those days the loss
of it must have been a serious one; but for the modern occupant it was a
real gain,--letting in the air and sunlight, and opening a pleasant view
of green plantations from every window of the court.

A servant met me at the main entrance, a broad stairway directly
opposite the gate, and, taking my card, led me up to a spacious hall,
where he asked me to wait while he went to announce my arrival to
the General. The hall was a large oblong room, plainly, but neatly
furnished, with a piano at one end, its tessellated oaken floor highly
polished, and communicating by folding-doors with an inner room, in
which I caught a glimpse of a bright wood-fire, and a portrait of Bailly
over the mantel. On the wall, to the left of the folding-doors, was
suspended an American flag with its blue field of stars and its red and
white stripes looking down upon me in a way that made my American veins
tingle.

But I had barely time to look around me before I heard a heavy step on
the stairs, and the next moment the General entered. This time he gave
me a French greeting, pressing me in his arms and kissing me on both
cheeks. "We were expecting you," said he, "and you are in good season
for dinner. Let me show you your room."

If I had had my choice of all the rooms in the castle, I should have
chosen the very one that had been assigned me. It was on the first--not
the ground--floor, at the end of a long vaulted gallery and in a tower.
There was a deep alcove from the bed,--a window looking down upon the
calm waters of the moat, and giving glimpses, through the trees, of
fields and woods beyond,--a fireplace with a cheerful fire, which had
evidently been kindled the moment my arrival was known,--the tessellated
floor with its waxen gloss,--and the usual furniture of a French
bed-room, a good table and comfortable chairs. A sugar-bowl filled
with sparkling beet sugar, and a decanter of fresh water, on the
mantel-piece, would have shown me, if there had been nothing else to
show it, that I was in France. The General looked round the room to make
sure that all was com