it and had charming effects of colour upon some of the thatched
cottages in the villages we passed through; one or two had been mended
recently and the mixture of old brown, bright red and glistening white
was quite lovely.

We went almost entirely along the great plains, occasionally small
bits of wood and very fair hills as we got near our destination. The
villages always very scattered and almost deserted--when it is cold
everybody stays indoors--and of course there is no work to be done on
the farms when the ground is hard frozen. It is a difficult question
to know what to do with the men of all the small hamlets when the real
winter sets in; the big farms turn off many of their labourers, and as
it is a purely agricultural country all around us there is literally
nothing to do. My husband and several of the owners of large estates
gave work to many with their regular "coupe" of wood, but that only
lasts a short time, and the men who are willing to work but can find
nothing drift naturally into cafés and billiard saloons, where they
read cheap bad papers and talk politics of the wildest description.

We found our château very well situated on the top of a hill, a good
avenue leading up to the gate, a pretty little park with fine trees at
the back, the tower of the village church just visible through the
trees at the end of the central alley. It was hardly a château--half
manor, half farm. We drove into a large courtyard, or rather farmyard,
quite deserted; no one visible anywhere; the door of the house was
open, but there was no bell nor apparently any means of communicating
with any one. Hubert cracked his whip noisily several times without
any result--and we were just wondering what we should do (perhaps put
our cards under a stone on the steps) when a man appeared, said Mme.
B. was at home, but she was in the stable looking after a sick cow--he