We had not much time to spare after breakfast, as the Bordeaux train by which we were going started at 11.20. A mosquito net was, however, one of the things we had forgotten, and one of the things which we were assured was indispensable, and it was not until we had entered a likely-looking shop that we realised that we did not know the French for mosquito. My second cousin and the shopwoman regarded each other for a few seconds in polite silence, and then the latter said interrogatively,-- ‘_Madame désire--?_’ [Illustration: RESOLVED THAT DEATH ALONE SHOULD PART US FROM BELLOWS’ DICTIONARY.] My second cousin answered diffidently that she desired fine net as a--as a--in short, for a veil against the--the flies that bite. The shopwoman looked at her with compassion, and offered me a handsome long black lace veil, and with it the assurance that mademoiselle would find it very becoming. At this stage in the negotiation the two purchasers began to laugh with the agonising laughter that has too often overtaken them in shops, and the shopwoman, as is usual in such cases, was obviously convinced that she was being laughed at, and haughtily replaced the lace veil in its box. Having wept profusely and idiotically before her for some moments, we recovered sufficiently to ask for white muslin, and succeeded in buying a suitable piece, with which we slunk out of the shop, resolved that in future death alone should part us from Bellows’ Dictionary. CHAPTER II. [Illustration] ‘Twenty minutes--half an hour--three-quarters--what mademoiselle pleases!’ This was what the waiter said when we asked him how long it would take to drive to the Gare d’Orléans on the morning that we left Paris. We selected half an hour, and by so doing as nearly as possible missed our train--in fact, when we arrived at the Quai d’Austerlitz the station clock was already at the hour of departure. It was consoling to be told officially that it was five minutes fast, but five minutes does not go far in the maddening routine of French stations, and we were wrecks, mentally and physically, by the time we had wedged ourselves into the crowded carriage, labelled ‘Bordeaux--Bastide,’ that was to be our portion. French railway officials never weary of this little practical joke of keeping the outside clock of the station five minutes fast. If they did it always it would lose its piquancy, but they guard against this by occasional deviations into truth, so that the nerve of the public is effectively shattered, and the station officials never fail of amusement.