A Spring Fortnight in France

self into the railway carriage by the straps of the door. " No wonder the French always speak of mounting ' en waggon.' If these steps were any higher I should need a porter to lift me in bodily, and porters are scarce in these provincial stations." She settled her small luggage in a corner, and finding that she was quite alone in the compartment, she made herself comfortable, leaned back in the corner, and reflected upon her sojourn in Le Mans. " Georgina might possibly have seen more than I did, but I doubt it. She would not have cared for the jolly coachman nor his friends, and would have found, without the aid of Madame la Baronne, that the queen of Richard the Lion-hearted was not really buried in Le Mans, but that her monument was brought there from Espan, where she was interred. Perhaps she never lived in the lovely old house and never looked out of the sculptured casements over the cheese shop, but I'm notgoing to doubt. I believe she watched her handsome, dashing, blond husband caracole through that badly paved street on a prancing Normandy stallion. He could curvet and wheel and entrance any woman's eyes out of her head, I'm sure. How I wish I might have seen him making his way to the Cathedral with his knights to sing a Te Deum for victory won." With the impressions of the precipitous, twisting streets, down which her hero so often strode, still fresh in her mind, and convinced that as a would-be author it was highly important to record ever...