"What! you have no more confidence than that in your cicerone!" exclaimed the doctor. "You will find that I am right, madame. There are so many stalls in the stable that when the great-grandfather, or great-great-grandfather of the present marquis lived here, he kept a regiment of cavalry here, horses and men at his own expense, just for the pleasure of seeing them go through their manoeuvres every morning before breakfast on the esplanade. It seemed to give the worthy man an appetite." "It was a whim worthy of a great soldier like him," said Marie. "You recollect with what interest we read the history of his Italian campaign last winter, do you not, Frederick?" "I should think I did remember," exclaimed Frederick, enthusiastically. "Next to Charles XII., the Maréchal de Pont Brillant is my favourite hero." Meanwhile the three visitors had crossed the esplanade, and Madame Bastien, seeing M. Dufour turn to the right instead of keeping straight on toward the front of the building, remarked: "But, doctor, it seems to me that the heavily carved door in front of us must lead into the inner courtyard." "So it does; the grand personages enter by that door, but plebeians, like ourselves, are lucky to get in the back way," replied the doctor, laughing. "I should like to see M. le Suisse take the trouble to open that armorial door for us." "I ask your pardon for my absurd pretensions," said Madame Bastien, gaily, while Frederick, making a sort of comical salute to the superb entrance, said, laughingly: "Ah, manorial doorway, we are only too well aware that you were not made for us!" M. Dufour, having rung at the servants' entrance and asked to see M. Dutilleul, head superintendent of the gardens and conservatories, the party was admitted into the courtyard. To reach M. Dutilleul's house, it was necessary to cross one of the stable-yards. About thirty riding, hunting, and carriage horses belonging to the young marquis had arrived the evening before, and a number of English grooms and hostlers were bustling in and out of the stables, some washing carriages, others polishing bits and stirrups until they shone like burnished silver, all under the vigilant eye of the chef of the stables, an elderly Englishman, who, with a cigar between his lips, was presiding over this work with truly British phlegm, cane in hand. Suddenly, pointing to a massive gate that had just turned slowly upon its hinges, the doctor exclaimed: "See, there come some more horses! A whole regiment of them. One would think we were living in the old marshal's time, Madame Bastien."