Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/229

 For all that, she was the nicest, the cheerfulest, and most pleasing robber and humbug I have ever known. I defy any Anglo-Saxon to give the fleeced as much value in the way of agreeable speech and cordiality and beaming smiles as this religious Norman lady gave me. She broke the heart of a trusting friend, and, having gracefully beggared her, drove her to America ruined and embittered, yet went on her own confident way along the path of virtue, assured of nothing more than her indisputable right to a seat in Paradise.

But she was not the first to initiate me into the economical mysteries of the French home. Before this I had been the "paying guest" of a native of Burgundy with an Alsatian title as long as an Alexandrian verse. She professed to have known Lamartine in her youth, and when I spoke of the poet by his name, she corrected me with a grand and reproving air: "Mademoiselle, we of Macon say Monsieur de Lamartine." Here the same mysteries of locked salon all the week round, open only for a few hours on the famous reception day of Madame la Baronne; the same absence of plenty at the board—lunch for three persons invariably three boiled eggs, three tiny cutlets and three boiled potatoes, three little rolls and three small apples. Never a fourth of anything, should one of the three happen to be a little hungrier than the other two. Only, as I had to