of such æsthetic culture that we refused at first to believe that they were preparing our _déjeuner_; and when later we seated ourselves at the table within the French window, and received from the hands of the wearer of the _pince-nez_ the delicious omelette that had been cooked in the open air, we felt embarrassed by a sense of the favour conferred. Our hostesses must, we fear, have been taken at a slight disadvantage by us; we felt rather than saw some want of completeness in their attire during the first stages of _déjeuner_,--a bareness as to neck, a skimpiness as to skirt; but as the meal progressed, so did the toilettes. By the time that we had finished our dish of smelts, with their wonderful wood-sorrel sauce, the wearer of the _pince-nez_ was glowing in a scarlet smocked silk jersey; and when the roast chicken was placed on the table, her sister had endued a flowing skirt, and wreathed her throat with some ten or twelve yards of amber beads. We could not swear that the _pince-nez_ themselves had been changed, but certainly it was only when dessert was arrived at that we noticed for the first time that they were gold-rimmed, and were attached by a slim gold chain to a brooch of barbaric splendour. It was a dessert greatly to be remembered that we had at the Hôtel Dussaut: the monster pears and grapes, the rich velvety wine of the district, and finally, the _spécialité_ of the town, ordered expressly for us by Monsieur A., the macaroons made at the convent according to an ancient recipe known to the nuns. Certainly the ecclesiastical macaroon transcends the secular variety; these come in warm and palpitating, still cleaving to the white square of paper on which they had been baked, looking like lumps of yellow foam at the foot of a waterfall, melting in the mouth as foam itself might melt, and suggesting the idea that the conventual life has its alleviations.