imagine; three tallow candle-ends by way of illumination, lots of
home-made wine for refreshment; the orchestra consisting of a
bagpipe and a hurdy-gurdy, the noisiest and, therefore, the best
appreciated in the country side. We invited some friends over from
La Chatre, and made fools of ourselves in a hundred thousand ways;
as, for instance, dressing up as peasants in the evening and
disguising ourselves so well as not to recognize each other. Madame
Duplessis was charming in a red petticoat; Ursule, in a blue blouse
and a big hat was a most comical fellow; Casimir, got up as a
beggar, had some halfpence given him in all good faith; Stephane,
whom I think you know, as a spruce peasant, made believe to have
been drinking, stumbled against our _sous-prefet_ and accosted
him--he is a nice fellow, and was just going to depart when all of
a sudden he recognized us. Well, it was a most farcical evening,
and would have amused you I will engage. Perhaps you, too, would
have been tempted to put on the country-cap, and I will answer for
it that there would not have been a pair of black eyes to compete
with yours.

In other letters written in a vein of charming good humor, her facility
and spirit are shown in her treatment of trivial incidents, or sketches
of local characters, as this, for example, of an ancient female servant
in her employ:

The strangest old woman in the world--active, industrious, clean
and faithful, but an unimaginable grumbler. She grumbles by day,
and I think by night, when asleep. She grumbles whilst making the
butter, she grumbles when feeding the poultry, she grumbles even at
her meals. She grumbles at other people, and when she is alone she
grumbles at herself. I never meet her without asking her how her
grumbling is getting on, and she grumbles away more than ever.

And elsewhere she has her fling at the little squabbles and absurdities
of provincial society, the "sets" and petty distinctions, giving a
humorous relation of the collapse of her well-meaning efforts, in
conjunction with friends at the _sous-prefecture_, to do away with some
of these caste prejudices, of the horror and indignation created in the
oligarchy of La Chatre by the apparition of an inoffensive music-master
and his wife at the _sous-prefet's_ reception, horror so great that on
the next occasion, the _salon_ of