We walked back to "Magna sed Apta" in great joy, and there we celebrated our newly-discovered kinship by a simple repast, out of _my_ repertoire this time. It consisted of oysters from Rules's in Maiden Lane, when they were sixpence a dozen, and bottled stout (_l'eau m'en vient a la bouche_); and we spent the rest of the hours allotted to us that night in evolving such visions as we could from the old tune "Le Chant du Triste Commensal," with varying success; she humming it, accompanying herself on the piano in her masterly, musician-like way, with one hand, and seeing all that I saw by holding my hand with the other. By slow degrees the scenes and people evoked grew less dim, and whenever the splendid and important lady, whom we soon identified for certain as Gatienne, our common great-great-grandmother, appeared--"la belle verriere de Verny le Moustier"--she was more distinct than the others; no doubt, because we both had part and parcel in her individuality, and also because her individuality was so strongly marked. And before I was called away at the inexorable hour, we had the supreme satisfaction of seeing her play the fiddle to a shadowy company of patched and powdered and bewigged ladies and gentlemen, who seemed to take much sympathetic delight in her performance, and actually, even, of just hearing the thin, unearthly tones of that most original and exquisite melody, "Le Chant du Triste Commensal," to a quite inaudible accompaniment on the spinet by her daughter, evidently Anne Herault, Comtesse de Boismorinel (_nee_ Budes), while the small child Jeanne de Boismorinel (afterwards Dame Pasquier de la Mariere) listened with dreamy rapture. And, just as Mary had said, she played her fiddle with its body downward, and resting on her knees, as though it had been an undersized 'cello. I then vaguely remembered having dreamed of such a figure when a small child. Within twenty-four hours of this strange adventure the practical and business-like Mary had started, in the flesh and with her maid, for that part of France where these, my ancestors, had lived, and within a fortnight she had made herself mistress of all my French family history, and had visited such of the different houses of my kin as were still in existence. The turreted castle of my childish dreams, which, with the adjacent glass-factory, was still called Verny le Moustier, was one of these. She found it in the possession of a certain Count Hector du Chamorin, whose grandfather had purchased it at the beginning of the century.