spring and would stay until the autumn rains. What busy times and what
drolleries! Ah, it was gay in those days! Monsieur remembers well. Ha,
Ha! But now, I think, the automobiles have frightened away the painters;
at least they do not come any more. And the automobiles themselves; they
come sometimes for lunch, a few, but they love better the seashore, and
we are just close enough to be too far away. Those automobiles, they
love the big new hotels and the casinos with roulette. They eat hastily,
gulp down a liqueur, and pouf! off they rush for Trouville, for
Houlgate--for heaven knows where! And even the automobiles do not come
so frequently as they did. Our road used to be the best from Lisieux to
Beuzeval, but now the maps recommend another. They pass us by, and yet
yonder--only a few kilometres--is the coast with its thousands. We are
near the world but out of it, monsieur."

He poured my coffee; dropped a lump of sugar from the tongs with a
benevolent gesture--"One lump: always the same. Monsieur sees that I
remember well, ha?"--and the twilight having fallen, he lit two orange-
shaded candles and my cigar with the same match. The night was so quiet
that the candle-lights burned as steadily as flames in a globe, yet the
air was spiced with a cool fragrance, and through the honeysuckle leaves
above me I saw, as I leaned back in my wicker chair, a glimmer of kindly
stars.

"Very comfortably out of the world, Amedee," I said. "It seems to me I
have it all to myself."

"Unhappily, yes!" he exclaimed; then excused himself, chuckling. "I
should have said that we should be happier if we had many like monsieur.
But it is early in the season to despair. Then, too, our best suite is
already engaged."