As we wound up the meal with several bunches of green and purple grapes, grey with dewy bloom, M. Blossier, with his cigarette and his patronising smile, appeared at the doorway, and as he leaned there, with his hands in his pockets, and his straw hat set crooked on his Astrakhan curls, he informed us that a gentleman had called upon us at the hotel the preceding afternoon, and had left word that he would return this morning, so perhaps it would be well if we gave ourselves the trouble to hasten. We looked at each other, conscious of an effect of failure in the morning’s toilet; the tinfoil looking-glass had slurred over defects that we now saw with a quickened perception. This must be the first-fruit of those letters of introduction that had been written about us, and what untold discredit were we now about to heap on our trusting friends! We flung down the unfinished bunches of grapes, and in less than five minutes we had got through the delicate matter of paying our reckoning, and were saying good-bye to Suzanne. It was unexpected under the circumstances that she should have kissed us, but nevertheless she did so. ‘_Tiens!_’ she cried, as I held out a hand for her to shake, ‘_il me faut vous donner une bise! Là! et là!_’ She gave us each two resounding kisses that, as far as garlic was concerned, were not lacking in that local flavour of which we were amateurs, and for fervour and sincerity equalled those that the Irish nurse bestows upon the objects of her affections. We drove away from Suzanne’s household with real regret. We had found in it an excellent _cuisine_ and a perfect hostess--so I remarked to my cousin with the dogmatic solemnity of a tombstone. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and we found a perfect host too, but he was a noun of multitude, and we provided the _cuisine_.’ She fingered her mosquito bites as she spoke, and we fell to reminiscences of our feeble efforts to [Illustration: M. BLOSSIER, WITH HIS CIGARETTE, APPEARED AT THE DOORWAY.] repulse the linked battalions of fleas and mosquitoes the night before. Very soon, however, we could think of nothing but the extraordinary heat of the wind that was blowing clouds of red dust over us, setting the white sun-bonnets of the _vendangeuses_ flapping, as we drove past them at the best speed to which we could incite M. Blossier, and after an hour of combat with it, we arrived at the hotel with our eyes full of sand, and our hair standing aureole-wise round our faces.