"Will ces dames join me in a marauding expedition? Like the poet Villon, I am about to turn marauder, house breaker, thief. I shall hope to end the excursion by one act, at least, of highway robbery. I shall lose courage without the enlivening presence of ces dames. We will start when the day is at its best, we will return when the moon smiles. In case of finding none to rob, the coach of the desperadoes will be garrisoned with provisions; Henri will accompany us as counsellor, purveyor, and bearer of arms and costumes. The carriage for ces dames will stop the way at the hour of eleven.

"I have the honor to sign myself their humble servant and co-conspirator.

"John Renard."

"This, in plain English," was Charm\'s laconic translation of this note, "means that he wishes us to be ready at eleven for the excursion to P——, to spend the day, you may remember, at that old manor. He wants to paint in a background, he said yesterday, while we stroll about and look at the old place. What shall I wear?"

In an hour we were on the road.

A jaunty yellow cart, laden with a girl on the front seat; with a man, tawny of mustache, broad of shoulder, and dark of eye, with face shining to match the spring in the air and that fair face beside him; laden also with another lady on the back seat, beside whom, upright and stiff, with folded arms, sat Henri, costumer, valet, cook, and groom. It was in the latter capacity that Henri was now posing. The role of groom was uppermost in his orderly mind, although at intervals, when his foot chanced to touch a huge luncheon-basket with which the cart was also laden, there were betraying signs of anxiety; it was then that the chef crept back to life. This spring in the air was all very well, but how would it affect the sauces? This great question was written on Henri\'s brow in a network of anxious wrinkles.

"Henri," I remarked, as we were wheeling down the roadway, "I am quite certain you have put up enough luncheon for a regiment."

"Madame has said it, for a regiment; Monsieur Renard, when he works, eats with the hunger of a wolf."

"Henri, did you get in all the rags?" This came from Renard on the front seat, as he plied his steed with the whip.

"The costume of Monsieur le Marquis, and also of Madame la Marquise de Pompadour, are beneath my feet in the valise, Monsieur Renard. I have the sword between my legs," replied Henri, the costumer coming to the surface long enough to readjust the sword.

"Capital fellow, Henri, never forgets anything," said Renard, in
English.

"Couldn\'t we offer a libation or something, on such a morning—"

"On such a morning," interrupted the painter, "one should be seated next to a charming young lady who has the genius to wear Nile green and white; even a painter with an Honorable Mention behind him and fame still ahead, in spite of the Mention, is satisfied. You know a Greek deity was nothing to a painter, modern, and of the French school, in point of fastidiousness."

"Nonsense! it\'s the American woman who is fastidious, when it comes to clothes."

Meanwhile, there was one of the party who was looking at the road; that also was arrayed in Nile green and white; the tall trees also held umbrellas above us, but these coverings were woven of leaves and sky. This bit of roadway appeared to have slipped down from the upper country, and to have carried much of the upper country with it. It was highway posing as pure rustic. It had brought all its pastoral paraphernalia along. Nothing had been forgotten: neither the hawthorn and the osier hedges, nor the tree-trunks, suddenly grown modest at sight of the sea, burying their nudity in nests of vines, nor the trick which elms and beeches have, of growing arches in the sky. Timbered farm-houses were here, also thatched huts, to make the next villa-gate gain in stateliness; apple orchards were dotted about with such a knowing air of wearing the long line of the Atlantic girdled about their gnarled trunks, that one could not believe pure accident had carried them to the edge of the sea. There were several miles of this driving along beneath these green aisles. Through the screen of the hedges and the crowded tree-trunks, picture succeeded picture; bits of the sea were caught between slits of cliff; farmhouses, huts, and villas lay smothered in blossoms; above were heights whereon poplars seemed to shiver in the sun, as they wrapped about them their shroud-like foliage; meadows slipped away from the heights, plunging seaward, as if wearying for the ocean; and through the whole this line of green roadway threaded its path with sinuous grace, serpentining, coiling, braiding in land and sea in one harmonious, inextricable blending of incomparable beauty. One could quite comprehend, after even a short acquaintance with this road, that two gentlemen of Paris, as difficult to please as Daubigny and Isabey, should have seen points of excellence in it.

There are all sorts of ways of being a painter. Perhaps as good as any, if one cares at all about a trifling matter like beauty, is to know a good thing when one sees it. That poet of the brush, Daubigny, not only was gifted with this very unusual talent in a painter, but a good thing could actually be entrusted in his hands after its discovery. And herein, it appears to me, lies all the difference between good and bad painting; not only is an artist—any artist—to be judged by what he sees, but also by what he does with a fact after he\'s acquired it—whether he turns it into poetry or prose.

I might incautiously have sprung these views on the artist on the front seat, had he not wisely forestalled my outburst by one of his own.

"By the way," he broke in; "by the way, I\'m not doing my duty as cicerone. There\'s a church near here—we\'re coming to it in a moment—famous—eleventh or twelfth century, Romanesque style—yes—that\'s right, although I\'m somewhat shaky when it comes to architecture—and an old manoir, museum now, with lots of old furniture in it—in the manoir, I mean."

"There\'s the church now. Oh, let us stop!"

In point of fact there were two churches before us. There was one of ivy: nave, roof, aisles, walls, and coni............