Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/93

 do passes the imagination. I know of a viscountess who possesses magnificent hunting land on which men from all parts are invited to hunt. The guests departing naturally tip game-*keepers and servants according to their means. Every tip, by order, under penalty of expulsion from the château, must be brought intact to the viscountess, and out of these tips are the servants paid their wages.

The life of fashion in Paris is pretty much the same as the life of fashion elsewhere. Men and women ride in the Bois in the early hours, and it must be admitted that they could not find a pleasanter spot to ride in anywhere. The landscape is charming, and if you break away from the Allée des Acacias—the Parisian Row—you may even make a feint at losing yourself under columns of tall trees, by little, moss-grown paths, where the branches meet overhead, with ever in view grassy rolls of sward and bright trellises of foliage above the broad white roads. In the early hours this trim paradise is cool and quiet; and even an Anarchist on foot will have no cause to envy his prosperous enemy on horseback, for the same delights of herb and leaf, of sky and water, are his at a cheaper rate. Indeed, there is no land on earth where a good-humoured taste of vicarious pleasures may be so freely and fully enjoyed as in France. Amiable petits gens sit on chairs and watch the great parade of the