The firing of a gun announced the luncheon hour. Marshalled by Maurice, the entire household, guests, servants and even the tiny granddaughter Aurora, holding Alice’s hand, assembled in _grande toilette_. Alice and her mother had been early out in the fields gathering wild flowers for the birthday nosegays, which they were to present to their hostess. Then she appeared. The servants cried: “_Vive la bonne dame._” Maurice read an address which he had prepared for the occasion. “_Ce que tu es adorablement stupide_,” cried his mother, embracing him. Then all the guests in turn expressed their good wishes. Luncheon passed gaily, the afternoon was spent out of doors. But the great event of the day was the evening performance in the marionette theatre. To the description of this highly ingenious, perfectly artistic and most entrancing of entertainments Mme. Adam devotes six pages of her _Souvenirs_. The spectators were encouraged to express their opinions audibly as the play went on. Each had his favourite actor or actress. Mme. Adam, having declared her preference for a certain Coq-en-Bois, he from the stage invited her to dine with him in a _cabinet particulier_ at the Café Brébant. “Ah! no, I protest!” cried Adam; and led by the queen of the festival, the whole audience was convulsed with laughter. In theory, and in practice during her early days, always a rebel against order and discipline, in her home George Sand had ever been the personification of orderliness. Perfect tidiness reigned in her simply furnished study. In her desk and her large cupboards, every drawer and shelf was furnished with a label indicating the contents. Equally precise was the arrangement of her bedroom, opening out of the study, with its fine old furniture and its hangings of blue—the colour of the Golfe Juan, as she said to Juliette. In her gardens, where she had acclimatised an immense variety of plants, collected during her travels, Mme. Sand took great delight. But no one was allowed to cut the flowers. Those used for house decoration were all gathered in the woods and fields.