ithout the hotel
walls. Day after day, month after month, year after year as we were
told, these men had fed together, yet we never saw them betray even the
most cursory interest in one another. They entered and departed without
revealing, by word or look, cognisance of another human being's
presence. Could one imagine a dozen men of any other nationality thus
maintaining the same indifference over even a short period? I hope
future experience will prove me wrong, but in the meantime my former
conception of the French as a nation overflowing with _bonhomie_ and
_camaraderie_ is rudely shaken.

The day of the year would have passed without anything to distinguish it
from its fellows had not the proprietor, who, by the way, was a Swiss,
endeavoured by sundry little attentions to reveal his goodwill. Oysters
usurped the place of the customary _hors d'oeuvres_ at breakfast, and
the meal ended with _cafe noir_ and cognac handed round by the
deferential Iorson as being "offered by the proprietor," who, entering
during the progress of the _dejeuner_, paid his personal respects to his
_clientele_.

The afternoon brought us a charming discovery. We had a boy guest with
us at luncheon, a lonely boy left at school when his few
compatriots--save only the two Red-Cross prisoners--had gone home on
holiday. The day was bright and balmy; and while strolling in the park
beyond the Petit Trianon, we stumbled by accident upon the _hameau_, the
little village of counterfeit rusticity wherein Marie Antoinette loved
to play at country life.

Following a squirrel that sported among the trees, we had strayed from
the beaten track, when, through the leafless branches, we caught sight
of roofs and houses and, wandering towards them, found ourselves by the
side of a miniature lake, round whose margin were grouped the daintiest
rural cottages that monarch could desire or Court architect design.

History had told us of the creation of this unique plaything of the
capricious Queen, but we had thought of it as a thing of the past, a toy
whose fragile beauty had been wrecked by the rude blows of the
Revolution. The matter-of-fact and unromantic Baedeker, it is true, gives
it half a line. After devoting pages to the Chateau, its grounds,
pictures, and statues, and detailing exhaustively the riches of the
Trianons, he blandly mentions the gardens of the Petit Trianon as
containing "some fine exotic trees, an artificial lake, a Temple of
Love, and a