All this happened in Picardy, a province where people lived well and washed sparingly. The very name of Mme. Adam’s birthplace, Verberie, with its suggestion of oyster patties and sauterne, made Robert Louis Stevenson’s mouth water, as he paddled towards it in his canoe. Juliette remembers how on Fridays at ten in the morning the oyster cart from Boulogne would arrive, bringing twelve dozen oysters for her family, how they would all sit round the table, the oyster barrel in the centre, and how each with his or her knife would open his or her oysters. Juliette’s grandfather and father would consume four dozen each, her grandmother and mother two dozen each, while sometimes there would be a friend who would abstract as many as possible from his hosts’ respective shares. Wine flowed freely at these feasts. Dr. Seron was a twelve-bottle man. But fortunately his beverage was only light Macon; and this, happily for his patients, was not consumed until he had performed his operations at the hospital. Operations! One trembles at the very word when associated with Dr. Seron. For, according to his granddaughter, that country surgeon was a most diligent cultivator of microbes. Ablutions, as we have said, were rare in Picard households. A bath was unheard of. Dr. Seron held that the face should be washed as little as possible for fear of bringing out a rash. Soap was only used on Sundays. The windows, of course, were kept tightly shut. Physical exercise was carefully avoided. The women of Mme. Adam’s family, like old-fashioned Frenchwomen down to the present day, seldom went beyond their own house and garden, declining even the attractions of the provincial theatre, for they agreed with Mme. de Sévigné that _une grande dame ne doit pas remuer les os_ (a true lady should not move about her bones). Nevertheless, though their bodies were cribbed, cabined and confined, these Frenchwomen’s minds moved in the great world of romance, their fancies glowed with all the fervent imaginings of that effervescent age. Mme. Adam’s grandmother lived, moved and had her being in the “Human Comedy” of Balzac. Turning over the pages of his ninety-seven novels, or sitting over her embroidery frame, she lived the lives of his five thousand characters. Her unfortunate choice of a husband for her granddaughter, Juliette, was largely dictated by the suitor’s resemblance to one of her favourite novelist’s heroes. * * * * *