La Ferte-sous-Jouarre is the seat of a large manufacture of millstones,
which are exported to all parts of the world, and it is a very thriving
little place. Large numbers of Germans are brought hither by commerce,
and now live again among their French neighbours as peacefully as before
the war. The attraction for tourists is, however, the twin-town of
Jouarre, reached by a lovely drive of about an hour from the little
town. Leaving the river, you ascend gradually, gaining at every step a
richer and wider prospect; below the blue river, winding between green
banks, above a lofty ridge of wooded hill, with hamlets dotted here and
there amid the yellow corn and luxuriant foliage. It is a bit of
Switzerland, and has often been painted by French artists. I can fancy
no more attractive field for a landscape-painter than this, who,
provided he could endure the perpetual noise of the stone-yards, would
find no lack of creature comforts.

The love of flowers and flower-gardens, so painfully absent in the West
of France, is here conspicuous. There are flowers everywhere, and some
of the little gardens give evidence of great skill and care. Jouarre is
perched upon an airy green eminence, a quiet old-world town, with an
enormous convent in the centre, where some scores of cloistered nuns
have shut themselves up for the glory of God. There they live, these
Bernardines, as they are called, as much in prison as if they were the
most dangerous felons ever brought to justice; and a prison-house,
indeed, the convent looks with its high walls, bars, and bolts. I had a
little talk with the sister in charge of the porter's lodge, and she
took me into the church, pointing to the high iron rails barring off the
cloistered nuns, with that imbecile self-satisfaction as much
inseparable from her calling as her unwholesome dress.

"There is one young English lady here," she said, "formerly a