“... a Soul whose master-bias leans To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes.”—Wordsworth. “_La vieillesse ... cet âge heureux où l’on n’est plus qu’amie, mère et grand’mère._”—Juliette Adam, _Souvenirs_, III. 211. The editing of _La Nouvelle Revue_ had, as we have seen, revolutionised Mme. Adam’s life. It had put an end to her salon and to her Mémoires. It had also prevented her from wintering in the South of France. Only at rare intervals could she find time to spend a few weeks at her beloved Bruyères. As time went on and as family, as well as business, ties multiplied in the north, Bruyères was more and more neglected, then entirely forsaken, and finally sold. Now, in order to be near her work, and also to be near her daughter and her daughter’s children, she exchanged her villa on Le Golfe Juan for a picturesque country house, L’Abbaye de Gif, in Seine et Oise. This new abode is but an hour’s train journey from Paris. It also borders on the lands of that famous convent, Port Royal des Champs. With the spirit of the great Port Royalists, of Pascal and of Racine, Mme. Adam communes as she writes. It was in the Abbey of Gif that some of the nuns from Port Royal took refuge when their settlement was broken up and their lands confiscated by Louis-Quatorze. Now the present Abbess of Gif, as her friends like to call Mme. Adam, sitting up in her Abbey tower far on into the night, watching the white mist rising from the valley, beholds in it forms which seem to her the sisters of Old France beckoning _la grande Française_ away from her early paganism. [Illustration: RUINS OF THE ABBEY OF GIF IN THE PARK OF MADAME ADAM’S PRESENT HOME]