When the villagers found out that I was not only an American but also a student of a great English university, then the stock of the little schoolmaster rose sky-high. My landlady informed me that the old curé had become quite jealous of the little man’s rapid rise in the community. An old but renovated Norman castle was a part of Pornic; it stood on the very edge of the steep coast and it was inhabited in summer by a rich merchant of Nantes. The castle had a thick grove of stately old trees, and there the nightingales revelled. On moonlight nights I spent many watchful hours listening to their mellow notes, accompanied by the solemn rhythm of the Atlantic waves striking gently upon the cliffs of the rocky coast, which appeared in my imagination, as I listened, like towering pipes of a giant organ. In daytime I selected lonely spots on the coast and there I spent my days from early morning till late in the afternoon memorizing my French grammar and vocabulary. Every evening I practised for an hour or so in conversation with my beloved _maître d’école_. This advanced my knowledge of French very rapidly and before one month was over I could converse tolerably well. My circle of acquaintances expanded rapidly as my knowledge of French increased, until it took in the nightingale grove, including the family of the merchant from Nantes. Between my friends in the nightingale grove and my schoolmaster’s garden my conversation in French became so fluent that it astonished the natives. They pronounced it perfect. But discounting this enthusiastic estimate by even fifty per cent I was still secure in my belief that I was enriched by a good knowledge of the language of a great civilization. A two months’ visit to Pornic had been my plan; its end was very near, and my trip was a success. I bade good-by to my friends in little Pornic and arrived in Paris on the following day, the fourteenth of July, 1884.