this is not only because what the author writes is important, but because he does not write when he has nothing to say. M. DE BLOWITZ AT HIS SUMMER HOME. This reticence is superb, and one of its practical results has been the remarkable physical vigor of this man who is after all no longer young. One should see him in his country home. M. de Blowitz went up and down the north coast of France, hunting for an eyry. He found it on the wooded top of one of the side slopes of the thousand and one ravines in which fishermen along that coast had fixed their cabins, at the small hamlet of _Les Petites Dalles_. Like Alphonse Karr at Etretat, he made the fame of this spot. Your guide-book will tell you the fact. "M. de Blowitz, correspondent of the English newspaper the 'Times,' has a villa here." I defy you to find any other distinction special to this place. The high Normandy coast is always charming, but it is equally so at a hundred other points. And of what charm there is here simply as village, M. Blowitz's presence would seem to threaten the partial extinction. For this very presence is rendering the spot famous and crowded. Sit in the afternoon listening to the three violins that provide the music, and, taking your absinthe on one of those hard benches within the narrow limits of the space there called Casino, you will run the risk of overhearing a conversation like this: "This is your first summer here?" "Yes, came last night. I am tired of Pau, and thought I could bury myself here. But there's too much world." "Yes, but what a world it is!" "Oh, I don't mind that! They say there's enough society in the villas. Since de Blowitz built the _Lampottes_ and has brought his friends down, there are some people _tres bien de la meilleure societe_ on the cliffs. That's the place up there, the house with the flag above all the others. I walked up there this morning. He has a tennis court. Looking up the gravel walk, I saw him sitting on the veranda. That's M. Ernest Daudet's place just under him in the trees--_mais voila_; there he is."