We went over from Villers to breakfast. It was late in the season, the end of September--one of those bright days one sometimes has in September, when summer still lingers and the sun gives beautiful mellow tints to everything without being strong enough to make one feel the heat. The road was lovely all the way, particularly after we turned off the high road at the top of the Houlgate Hill. We went through countless little Norman lanes, quite narrow, sometimes--between high green banks with a hedge on top, and the trees meeting over our heads--so narrow that I wondered what would happen if we met another auto. We left the sea behind us, and plunged into the lovely green valley that runs along back of the coast line. We came suddenly on the gates of the château, rather a sharp turn. There was a broad avenue with fine trees leading up to the house--on one side, meadows fenced off with white wooden palings where horses and cows were grazing--a pretty lawn before the house with beds of begonias, and all along the front, high raised borders of red geranium which looked very well against the grey stone. We found a family party, Comte and Comtesse d'Y----, their daughter and a governess. We went upstairs (a nice wooden staircase with broad shallow steps) to an end room, with a beautiful view over the park, where we got out of all the wraps, veils, and glasses that one must have in an open auto if one wishes to look respectable when one arrives, and went down at once to the hall where the family was waiting. The dining-room was large and light, high, wide windows and beautiful trees wherever one looked. The decoration of the room was rather curious. The d'Y----s descend--like many Norman families--from William the Conqueror, and there are English coats-of-arms on some of the shields on the walls. A band which looks like fresco, but is really painted on linen--very cleverly arranged with some composition which makes it look like the wall--runs straight around the room with all sorts of curious figures: soldiers, horses, and boats, copied exactly from the famous Bayeux tapestries, the most striking episodes--the departure of the Conqueror from Dives--the embarkation of his army (the cavalry--most extraordinary long queerly shaped horses with faces like people)--the death of Harold--the fighting Bishop Odo--brother of the Conqueror, who couldn't carry a lance, but had a good stout stick which apparently did good service as various Saxons were flying horizontally through the air as he and his steed advanced; one wonders at the imagination which could have produced such extraordinary figures, as certainly no men or beasts, at any period of time, could have looked like those. The ships were less striking--had rather more the semblance of boats.