One of the most spontaneous, infectious laughs that I have ever heard, was in the market place at Bordeaux, from a market woman keeping one of the stalls. It was like the trill of a lark springing upwards for pure, light-hearted impulse of gaiety. In it seemed impressed the whole soul of humour. There is so much in a laugh. Some laughs make one instantly desire to be grave: some are absolutely mirthless, but are part of one's conventional equipment, and come in handy when some sort of a conversational squib has been thrown into the midst of a drawing-room full of people, and does not go off as it was expected to do. But the laugh born of the very spirit of humour itself is rare indeed. The laugh of the woman in the market place at Bordeaux, was one of these last. What provoked it I have forgotten, but I rather fancy it was in some way connected with my camera, as a few moments later she was exclaiming to her companions, her whole face beaming with pleasure, "_Ah! je suis pris! je suis pris!_" Her voice was like a little, dancing, sparkling Yorkshire beck that is continually and musically, garrulous. It was full of those little sympathetic descents, when pitying or condoling, which never fall on one's ear so delicately as from a Frenchwoman's tongue. How heavily drag most of our own chariot wheels of voice modulation compared with hers! For her sentences in this respect are all coloured, and ours are often inexpressive, often humourless. It may be--and perhaps this is a possible hypothesis--that our words mean more than hers, but to be bald, if only in expression, is almost as bad as to be bald on the top of one's head! In the market our first glimpse in the dull gloom of the tarpaulins, was of huge pumpkins sliced open, their vivid yellow showing in sharp outline against the sooty black of the flapping canvas: cool pineapples wearing still their soft prickly leaves and stalks; the dull crimson of the beetroot: the large open baskets filled with _ceps_, (the fungus common in the neighbourhood, which is like a mushroom, only much larger, and with tiny roots at its base), and with the curious looking bits of warty earth, or dried, dingy sponges, which truffles resemble more than anything else, when first gathered. There was a continuous conversation from all quarters going on as we entered the market, which fell on one's ears like the roar of surf on a distant shore. In one corner, a little party of four stall holders was sitting down to dinner. The inevitable little bottle of red wine figured on the table, and some hot stew had just been produced, accompanied by the familiar twisted roll of bread which is always a welcome adjunct to any board, whether of high degree or low--the medium betwixt the bread and lip of course being the knife of peculiar shape which one sees everywhere.