Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/168

138 observatory at the top of the house. I can shut out all, and live with nature and my books. There is a terrace, and at high tide the sea rolls under it, and at a stretch I could fancy myself on board a ship; but, thank God, I am getting better.

They come and ask you what you would like for dinner:

"Ce que vous avez à la maison; je ne suis pas difficile." "Nous avons tout du melon, par exemple—des crevettes," etc.

What they want to feed me on here are melons and water. An Englishman came the other day, very hungry, and wanted to dine. "Voulez-vous une omelette, monsieur?" "Damn your omelette!" he said; "I want to dine." He was obliged to go. The servants are one remove from animals, and the family ditto, except madame, who is charming. The weather is beastly, the sea is muddy, the sand all dirt; there is not a piano in the town. The baths are half an hour from here, and the Basse gents are excessively sauvage. But even in this fifth-rate society I found a grain of wheat among the chaff—a Parisian Spanish woman, the wife of a physician, here for her child's health, very spirituelle, not pretty, and devoted to Paris. We smoke and read, and she gives me the benefit of her experience, which I really think I had better have been without; but she is a jolly little creature, and I do not know how I should pass my time without her.

Blanche and my brother-in-law joined me at Honfleur a fortnight after my arrival; and having received a draft for fresh supplies, we determined to start next