I had scarcely concluded when the Swiss came knocking softly to my door, and handed me a letter from the very woman whose name was still in wet ink upon my folded page. I tore it open eagerly, to find a score of pleasant remembrances. She had learned the night before that the priest was to set out in the morning: “I have kept my word,” she went on. “Your best friend is Bernard, so I let you have him, and let us exchange our billets through him. It will be the most Discreet method. And I am, with every consideration, Ye Ken Wha.” CHAPTER XX LEADS ME TO THE FRONT OF A COFFEE-HOUSE WHERE I AM STARTLED TO SEE A FACE I KNOW The occasion for this precaution in our correspondence was beyond my comprehension; nevertheless I was too proud to have the patronage of so fine a woman to cavil at what system she should devise for its discreet conduct, and the Swiss that night got my first letter to frank and despatch. He got one next evening also, and the evening after that; in short, I made a diurnal of each stage in our journey and Bernard was my postman--so to name it--on every occasion that I forwarded the same to Miss Walkinshaw. He assured me that he was in circumstances to secure the more prompt forwardation of my epistles than if I trusted in the common runner, and it was a proof of this that when we got, after some days, into Versailles, he should bring to me a letter from the lady herself informing me how much of pleasure she had got from the receipt of the first communication I had sent her. Perhaps it is a sign of the injudicious mind that I should not be very mightily pleased with this same Versailles. We had come into it of a sunny afternoon and quartered at the Cerf d'Or Inn, and went out in the evening for the air. Somehow the place gave me an antagonism; its dipt trees all in rows upon the wayside like a guard of soldiers; its trim gardens and bits of plots; its fountains crying, as it seemed, for attention--these things hurt me as a liberty taken with nature. Here, thought I, is the fitting place for the raff in ruffles and the scented wanton; it should be the artificial man and the insincere woman should be condemned to walk for ever in these alleys and drink in these _bosquets;_ I would not give a fir planting black against the evening sky at home for all this pompous play-acting at landscape, nor a yard of the brown heather of the hills for all these well-drilled flower parterres. “Eh! M. Croque-mort,” said the priest, delighted visibly with all he saw about him; “what think'st thou of Le Notre's gardening?” “A good deal, sir,” I said, “that need never be mentioned. I feel a pity for the poor trees as I did for yon dipt poodle dog at Griepon.”