by a single sail--_Moret_ with its twin water-ways, one hardly knows
which of the two being the more attractive--_Nemours_, favourite haunt
of Balzac, memoralized in "Ursule Mirouet"--_La Charite_, from whose
old-world dwellings you may throw pebbles into the broad blue
Loire--_Pougues_, the prettiest place with the ugliest name, frequented
by Mme. de Sevigne and valetudinarians of the Valois race generations
before her time--_Souvigny_, cradle of the Bourbons, now one vast
congeries of abbatial ruins--_Arcis-sur-Aube_, the sweet riverside home
of Danton--its near neighbour, _Bar-sur-Aube_, connected with a bitterer
enemy of Marie Antoinette than the great revolutionary himself, the
infamous machinator of the Diamond Necklace. These are a few of the
sweet nooks and corners to which of late years I have returned again and
again, ever finding "harbour and good company." And these journeys, I
should rather say visits, East of Paris led me once more to that sad
yearning France beyond the frontier, to homes as French, to hearts as
devoted to the motherland as when I first visited the annexed provinces
twenty years ago!






EAST OF PARIS




CHAPTER I