It was the hottest, most deserted hour of the day when the walking party reached Langrune plage, an hour when such of the young Parisians as do not follow _la pêche_ drive donkey-carts--those wonderful, springless, seatless, Langrune carts--along the country roads, or start, by rail, to distant Trouville for toilettes and distraction. Here and there were elderly ladies at work before the doors of their canvas bathing-sheds. In the road two portly fathers of families were solemnly sending up ‘messengers’ to a very small Japanese kite some fifty or sixty feet above their heads. Two other middle-aged gentlemen played at battledore and shuttlecock. A few irrepressible boulevard lovers sat over their cards or dominoes outside the restaurant windows of the principal hotel. The shrill sounds from a fish auction, held on the monster slab of rough granite which constitutes the Langrune market-place, alone broke the stillness. Before one had thought it possible that dress or speech could have betrayed the nationality of the new-comers, up ran a brown-legged, tattered sand-imp, holding out a bunch of shore-flowers. He announced his name, with some pride of birth, as Jean Jacques la Ferté of these parts, offering his services as cicerone to the English strangers. ‘The gentlemen, without doubt, make a pilgrimage to La Delivrande, half a league away up the country? At La Delivrande is the church and the altar where the miracles are wrought. There are the little ships of the sailors, the crutches left by the cripples who get back use of their legs. And for the ladies there are the stalls with the relics. Every one in the country,’ ran on the child, with voluble distinctness--Jean Jacques, a source of revenue to his parents, was trained to speak good French with the visitors--‘every one in the country who is sick gets cured. Every one who has a _grand espoir_ goes to La Delivrande, and, if he has faith, attains it. Or so the curé says,’ added Jean Jacques, with a roll of his black eyes and a knowing shrug of the shoulders. At seven years of age even sand-imps, in these advanced French days, like to show we are no longer bound by the priestly superstitions that were well enough for our grandmothers. Lord Rex made a free paraphrase of the child’s narrative in English, and was witty thereupon. ‘Every one who is sick gets cured. Every one who has a _grand espoir_ goes to La Delivrande, and, if he have faith, obtains it. Miss Verschoyle, what do you say? Have you a _grand espoir_? Have you faith? Shall we make our pilgrimage, confess our little peccadilloes, and get cured together?’