game-bag, and his gun over his shoulder, his dog at his heels
expectant and eager. Some of the guests were strolling about and from
almost all the windows--wide open to let in the warm morning
sun--there came cheerful greetings.

I went for a walk around the house before breakfast. There are five
large round towers covered with ivy--the walls extraordinarily
thick--the narrow little slits for shooting with arrows and the round
holes for cannon balls tell their own story of rough feudal life. On
one side of the castle there is a large hole in the wall, made by a
cannon ball sent by Turenne. He was passing one day and asked to whom
the château belonged. On hearing that the owner was the Maréchal de la
Feuillade, one of his political adversaries, he sent a cannon ball as
a souvenir of his passage, and the gap has never been filled up.

I went all over the house later with the Marquis de Lasteyrie. Of
course, what interested me most was Lafayette's private
apartments--bedroom and library--the latter left precisely as it was
during Lafayette's lifetime; bookcases filled with his books in their
old-fashioned bindings, running straight around the walls and a
collection of manuscripts and autograph letters from kings and queens
of France and most of the celebrities of the days of the Valois--among
them several letters from Catherine de Medicis, Henry IV, and la Reine
Margot. One curious one from Queen Margot in which she explains to the
Vicomte de Chabot (ancestor of my host) that she was very much
preoccupied in looking out for a wife for him with a fine dot, but
that it was always difficult to find a rich heiress for a poor
seigneur.

There are also autographs of more modern days, among which is a letter