I am at least not wrong in affirming that in the accent with which the mamma--especially if she be of the well-rounded order alluded to above--speaks of _Ma fille_ there is a kind of sacerdotal dignity. V. After this came two or three pictures of quite another complexion--pictures of which a long green valley, almost in the centre of France, makes the general setting. The valley itself, indeed, forms one delightful picture, although the country which surrounds it is by no means a show region. It is the old region of the Gâtinais, which has plenty of history, but no great beauty. It is very still, deliciously rural, and immitigably French. Normandy is Norman, Gascony is Gascon, but this is France itself--the typical, average, "pleasant" France of history, literature, and art--of art, of landscape art, perhaps, especially. Wherever I look in the country I seem to see one of the familiar pictures on a dealer's wall--a Lambinet, a Troyon, a Daubigny, a Diaz. The Lambinets perhaps are in the majority; the mood of the landscape usually expresses itself in silvery lights and vivid greens. The history of this part of France is the history of the monarchy, and its language is, I won't say absolutely the classic tongue, but a nearer approach to it than any local _patois_. The peasants deliver themselves with rather a drawl, but what they speak is good clean French that any cockney can understand, which is more than can be said sometimes for the violent jargon that emanates from the fishing folk of Etretal.