remember a jovial-faced innkeeper of the South telling me that he and
several members of his family went to Paris in a party to see the
Exhibition of 1889, and that they took with them _grillons_ enough to keep
them going for a week, with the help of bread and wine, which they were
compelled to buy of the Parisians, Had they done all that their provincial
ideas of prudence dictated, they would have taken with them everything that
was necessary to the sustenance of the body during their absence from home.

The best part of our meal must not be forgotten; it was salad,
fresh-plucked from the little garden enclosed by a paling, well mixed with
nut-oil, wine-vinegar, and salt. Then for dessert there was abundance of
grapes and peaches.

The little room in which we slept, or, to speak more correctly, where I
tried to sleep, had no ornament except the Sunday clothes of the innkeeper
and his wife hanging against the walls. Next to it was the pigsty, as the
inmates took care to let me know by their grunting. Had I wished to escape
in the night without paying the bill, nothing would have been easier, for
the window looked upon a field that was about two feet below the sill.

I opened this window wide to feel the cool air, and long after Hugh went to
sleep, with the willingness of his sixteen years, I sat listening to the
crickets and watching the quiet fields and sky, which were lit up every few
seconds by the lightning flash of an approaching storm--still too far away,
however, to blur even with a cloudy line the tranquil brilliancy of the
stars.

Leaving the window open, I lay down upon the outer edge of the bed, but to
no purpose. In the first place, I am never happy on the edge of a narrow
bed, and then sleep and I were on bad terms that night. The lightning,