"_Voulez-vous une botte de cresson, messieurs?_"--"_Oui, s'il vous plait, m'sieur: merci bien!_" The old fellow places his little bridge across the canal, cuts a bundle, and binds it from the sheaf of dried grass at his waist. "_Voilà, messieurs!_" The purchasers stop far longer than is necessary to talk about the War and the price of sugar and the scarcity of _charbon_. Conversation is the provincial hobby, as it is the national hobby. Yet I have never seen the French mutually bored by conversation--never. Nor are there, in French conversation, those stodgy gaps which are to be expected in the conversation of the English, and, still more, of the Australians. French conversation flows on; _ebbs and flows_ expresses better not only the knack of apt rejoinder which gives it perfect naturalness, but also the rhythmic rise and fall of it which makes it pleasant to hear, even when you don't understand a word. That, and its perfect harmony of gesture, make it a living thing, with all the interest of a thing that lives. We (unnecessarily, again) wander about the garden with Madeleine. She gives the history of each plot. What interests us is to her a matter of course: the extraordinary neatness of the garden, the uniformity of plot, the assiduous exclusion of weeds, the careful demarcation of paths, the neatness of the all-surrounding hedge. The French genius for detail and for industry shows itself nowhere so clearly as in a garden. They are gardeners born. On returning to the house, madame insists that we stay to dinner. We accept without hesitation. _Le père_ comes in and brings the dogs. Soon we know their history from puppyhood. _Finu_ is morose and jealous; she has a litter of pups that make her unfriendly. _Koko_ is a happy chap--always a friend to soldiers, as the old man puts it. He is a _souvenir_ left by a Captain of artillery. All this is, in itself, rather uninteresting, but in the way in which it is put it is absorbing. That, in fact, is the secret of the charm of most French conversation. In the mouth of an Englishman--such is its trifling detail--it would be deadly-boring. The French aptness and vividness of description dresses into beauty the most uninteresting detail. It soon appears that the whole family are refugees from Arras; have lived here two years. I told them I had recently visited Arras. This flooded me with questions. I wish I had known the detailed geography of Arras better. The narrative of a recent Arras bombardment moved them to tears. They love their town: they love more than their home. This is the spirit of the Republic. The Frenchman's affection for his town is as strong as the Scotchman's for his native heath.