Time flies. The farmer throws a handful or two of chestnuts to roast in the embers, and sets, mayhap, on the table a bottle of red wine. And the stories and the gossip begin again till the log, burned through, falls with a crash from the fire-dogs and sends up a fountain of sparks. The cricket sings shrill, but hark! without the snow-blast sings more shrilly yet. The clock strikes nine. Master and men arise and bid each other good night. The neighbours light their lanterns and don a sort of Inverness cloak--their _limousines_; the cowherd goes to seek his warm bed in the cow-stable. And the door, opened an instant for their egress, reveals the gusty moon-shot night and the vast expanse, dazzling, and yet dim, of endless snow--a polar landscape, inhospitable and sad. A MANOR IN TOURAINE A MANOR IN TOURAINE (LA COMMANDERIE DE BALLAN) 1903 I An old irregular house, a long grey line in the hollow, founded by the Templars some eight hundred years ago and finished yesterday. In 1189, Henry II. of England lay there for a night, very sick, on his way to die at Chinon. The house was then a Commanderie of the Knights-Templar: we know how they perished! In all ages, I think, patriotism in France has shown two sides--two faces, if you will; the one aristocratic, desiring the advancement of the nation by means of an _élite_, a chosen few, to whose perfection the common sort was to be sacrificed; the other, essentially popular, full of dreams and visions, plotting a general happiness and justice made absolute on earth. The Templars were of the former party. Early in the fourteenth century, a democratic king made a clean sweep of them, confiscated their wealth, and left our Commanderie to bear an empty name. Doubtless, at the moment, King Philip was full of virtuous schemes. A volume of documents, edited by Renan, shows the wise uses to which the French Government intended to put this lucky potful of treasure: there is a plan for popular education, elaborated by a certain Pierre Du Bois, which we might read to-day, with colleges for women, scholarships for lady doctors, an Order of Nursing Sisters to be sent to the colonies--all strangely modern for 1306. High schools for boys and girls, with special facilities for studying the natural and moral sciences, were to be established in the existing Commanderies. But nothing came of it, of course; and no one knows exactly what hole in fourteenth-century finance was stopped by the nuggets of the unfortunate Knights-Templar. Our Commanderie remained a Commanderie. It was handed over to the Knights of Malta. So much and no more do we know of its fate from the time of Philip the Fair till the French Revolution. For five hundred years a mist envelops it. The nineteenth century was to raise its fortunes.