"Here they are," she said, depositing an armful on the table. "But I
have never read much, and mostly _bibelots_" (trifles.)

Her poor little library consisted of _bibelots_ indeed, a history of
Jeanne d'Arc for children, and half a dozen other works, mostly school
prizes of the kind awarded before school prizes in France were worth the
paper on which they were printed.




CHAPTER VI.


LARCHANT.

There is a certain stimulating quality of elasticity and crispness in
the French atmosphere which our own does not possess. France, moreover,
with its seven climates--for the description of these, see Reclus'
Geography--does undoubtedly offer longer, less broken, spells of hot
summer weather than the United Kingdom. But let me for once and for all
dispel a widespread illusion. The late Lord Lytton, when Ambassador in
Paris, used to say that in the French capital you could procure any
climate you pleased. And experience proves that without budging an inch
you may in France get as many and as rapid climatic changes as anywhere
else under the sun. At noon in mid-May last I was breakfasting with
friends on the Champs Elysees, when my hostess put a match to the fire
and my host jumped up and lighted six wax candles. So dense had become
the heavens that we could no longer see to handle knives and forks!
Hail, wind, darkness and temperature recalled a November squall at home.