It was while sitting at tea at the large admirable table belonging to this room, on the afternoon of our first experience in the _cuviers_, that we became conscious of the eye of the Kodak regarding us from behind our eighteenpenny teapot with a cold reproach. As yet the gardens on the Thames Embankment reigned in lonely beauty in the recesses of the machinery; nothing French had been given to the mysterious custody of the black box, though we had carried it, at considerable inconvenience, to the _cuvier_ of St. Lambert in the morning. The right moment never seemed to come; the sun was where it ought not to be, or we were afraid that the suitable peasant might be offended, and we had besides a latent disbelief in the Kodak’s willingness to deal with southern sunshine and a foreign sky tingling with light. ‘It has the surly English turn in it somewhere,’ my cousin had said, with Galway arrogance. But it was now saying ‘_Ici on parle Français_’ with all the power of its sunken eye; and as soon as we had thrown the tea-leaves out of the window, and hidden the jug of cold boiled milk behind the stuffed fox on the side-table, we went down and ordered a wagonette for the next morning from a livery stable, and felt that we were going to do our duty seriously by the Kodak. The weather certainly did its part of the business to perfection. The sun blazed upon our departure, as we emerged from the hotel in the morning, and the heat came through the cool wind in streaks, as the vanille biscuit intersects the aching monotony of the lemon ice. Under the awning outside the coffee-room windows sat Madame, filling out her straw chair in magnificent meditation. Ours had been the last of the _petits déjeuners_, so that there was no longer any need for her to watch over the expenditure of red embers and _café au lait_ in the kitchen, and she could now exhibit her elegant leisure and her blue cloth slippers to the loungers of Pauillac for an hour or so. We wished, for her sake, that the wagonette was larger and had two horses, and that the Kodak’s resemblance to a box of ‘samples’ had not given us so much the effect of commercial travellers; but she gave us a ‘_bonne promenade_,’ and a wave of the hand, that showed she had a heart that did not despise the humble.