Best of all at this season, we have quite to ourselves that prince of major-domos, our landlord, Lemois. For as this inn is no ordinary inn, this banquet room no ordinary room, and this kitchen no ordinary kitchen, so, too, is Monsieur Lemois no ordinary landlord. A small, gray, gently moving, low-voiced man with thoughtful, contented face, past the prime of life; a passionate lover of animals, flowers, and all beautiful things; quick of temper, but over in a moment; a poet withal, yet a man with so quaint a humor and of so odd a taste, and so completely absorbed in his pets, cuisine, garden, and collection, that it is easy to believe that when he is missed from his carnal body, he will be found wandering as a ghost among these very flower-beds or looking down from the walls of the Marmouset--doubtless an old haunt of his prior to this his latest incarnation. Only here would he be really happy, and only here, perhaps, among his treasures, would he be fully understood. One of the rarest of these--a superb Florentine chair--the most important chair he owns, stood within reach of my hand as I sat listening to him before the crackling blaze. "Unquestionably of the sixteenth century!" he exclaimed with his customary enthusiasm, as I admired it anew, for, although I had heard most of it many times, I am always glad to listen, so quaint are his descriptions of everything he owns, and so sincerely does he believe in the personalities and lineage of each individual piece. "I found it," he continued, "in a little chapel in Ravenna. For years it had stood outside the cabinet of Alessandro, one of the Florentine dukes. Think of all the men and women who have sat in it, and of all the cruel and anxious thoughts that raced through their brains while they waited for an audience with the tyrant! Nothing like a chair for stirring up old memories and traditions. And do you see the carved heads on the top! I assure you they are alive! I have caught them smiling or frowning too often at the talk around my table not to know. Once when De Bouf, the great French clown was here, the head next you came near splitting itself in two over his grimaces, and when Marcot told one of his pathetic stories that other one wept such tears that I had to mop them up to keep the velvet from being spoilt. You don't believe it?--you laugh! Ah!--that is just like you modern writers--you do not believe anything--you have no imagination! You must measure things with a rule! You must have them drawn on the blackboard! It is because you do not see them as they are. You shut your eyes and ears to the real things of life; it is because you cannot understand that it is the _soul_ of the chair that laughs and weeps. Monsieur Herbert will not think it funny. He understands these queer heads--and, let me tell you, they understand _him_. I have often caught them nodding and winking at each other when he says something that pleases them. He has himself seen things much more remarkable.