see the château from the high road.

We turned off sharply to the left and at the end of a long avenue saw
the house, half hidden by the trees. The entrance through a low
archway, flanked on each side by high round towers covered with ivy,
is most picturesque. The château is built around three sides of a
square court-yard, the other side looking straight over broad green
meadows ending in a background of wood. A moat runs almost all around
the house--a border of salvias making a belt of colour which is most
effective. We found the family--Marquis and Marquise de Lasteyrie and
their two sons--waiting at the hall door. The Marquis, great-grandson
of the General Marquis de Lafayette, is a type of the well-born,
courteous French gentleman (one of the most attractive types, to my
mind, that one can meet anywhere). There is something in perfectly
well-bred French people of a certain class that one never sees in any
other nationality. Such refinement and charm of manner--a great desire
to put every one at their ease and to please the person with whom they
are thrown for the moment. That, after all, is all one cares for in
the casual acquaintances one makes in society. From friends, of
course, we want something deeper and more lasting, but life is too
short to find out the depth and sterling qualities of the world in
general.

The Marquise is an Englishwoman, a cousin of her husband, their common
ancestor being the Duke of Leinster; clever, cultivated, hospitable,
and very large minded, which has helped her very much in her married
life in France during our troubled epoch, when religious questions and
political discussions do so much to embitter personal relations. The
two sons are young and gay, doing the honours of their home simply and
with no pose of any kind. There were two English couples staying in