_July 21st._--This evening (being fine) we walked past the Trianons. We met a shepherd with a flock of Andalusian sheep, and two fine dogs with pieces of wood hung to their necks. He had a crook in his hand, and a bag with a bottle in it by his side; one end of his crook was brass, and at the other there was a kind of little spade. We stopped to talk with the shepherd. Papa asked him what the dogs' names were; he answered 'Petit et Beau-Rouge.' The wood was round their necks so that he might know them. He said that he used the crook to catch the sheep by their legs. He told us that the use of the spade was to punish his dogs, and to explain what he meant, he dug up a piece of earth and threw it at them. Papa asked what was in his bottle. 'Méchant cidre,' he answered. Papa gave him a franc to fill the bottle. BAL CHAMPÊTRE _July 26th._--We drove out in the carriage this afternoon with Catherine, who was getting better, and who frequently drove out. We went round by the Trianons; in the forest we saw some pretty roebucks, which bounded through the wood. We passed a field full of lilac poppies. In returning we stopped at the Boulevard de St. Antoine, where there was a _bal champêtre_. There were lamps hung on the trees. The music was very dull. We saw them dance two quadrilles. One _garde du corps_ danced in a most extraordinary manner: he jumped and hopped, and kicked and bounced, as if he had learned off a bear at the North Pole. His partner, a little girl of ten or eleven years old, danced very well. One lady in a pink silk bonnet seemed as if she had learned in the French style, but wanted to dance lighter, for she walked two or three steps and then jumped up. They all kept bad time, walked and hopped. The three Miss Williams and their father were there. In the middle of their dance a heavy shower of rain came on; everybody ran into a house or went home. We saw the Miss Williams standing under a tree, like three white graces, half-way home. TOADSTOOLS, ETC. _July 28th._--This was an excessively rainy day; we found ten toadstools in Catherine's room. There were several people dining here; there were fires in the rooms, which everybody was glad to get near. It was wet, disagreeable weather. We were all waiting eagerly to go home; the days seemed like weeks. To make them appear shorter, I made a list of all the days till the time we were to go home, and I scratched out one each day. This day was Nannette's fête; she went to a Dutch frow (a German woman), who gave her a nosegay. BELLE VUE _July 29th._--We drove out this evening to Belle Vue. It was a fine evening. We saw a man standing before his door watering some boxes full of mushrooms. At Belle Vue we went through a house where we had a very fine view of Paris, the Seine and St. Cloud. We looked at a vineyard; there were no grapes on the vines there. We heard that the bad season had injured them.[39] PRIESTS WITH HOST--CORPSE, ETC.