Everywhere one met with a ready smile, charming courtesy and kindly interest. For some unknown reason we were taken for Americans in almost every place to which we went! Occasionally, I must confess, I received more "interest" than I care for. For instance, when sketching in the Rue Quai-Bourgeois, I was sometimes aimed at from an upper window with bits of stale bread and apple parings, which luckily failed of their mark and fell harmlessly at my feet! And when trying to "take" some old doorway, people, now and again governed by the idea that human nature must always surpass in interest their dwellings, would strike a pose in the doorway, or leaning against the doorpost itself, hinder one's getting sight of it in its entirety. Not content even with this, it did on occasion happen that a man would come so close to the lens of the camera that he literally blocked it up! Once a whole family party came down and stood, or sat, in becoming attitudes before the door, all having assumed the pleasing smile which they consider to be a _sine quâ non_ on such occasions. It really went to my heart not to take them, but I was reserving my last plate that afternoon for a particularly charming old doorway farther on. As I turned away I saw with the tail of my eye the smiles smoothing themselves out, the man's arm slipping down from the waist of the girl beside him, the surprised disappointment sweeping across the group of faces like a cloud across the sun, and I almost "weakened" on my doorway! I remember once, some years ago, in Belgium, my modest camera attracted so much attention that I speedily became the centre of an enormous crowd, which increased every minute in bulk, so that at last the street was blocked and all traffic suspended. Bordeaux is a city of barrels. They are the first thing you see as you leave the station. They line the quay side: barrels yellow, barrels green, barrels blue. They meet you daily as you pass along the streets, whether they lie along the road, or whether they are being conveyed in one of the large, fenced-in carts, whose horses are covered with a faded "art-green" horse cloth, and who wear over the collar a curious black wool top-knot. CHAPTER VI Bordeaux has a fine quay side. Bridges, shipping, old buildings, spread of river, variety of local colour, all combine to give it this.