The evenings are awful. Although it is so warm no one thinks of walking in the garden, or even sitting out on the _perron_. When we come out from dinner, though it is broad daylight, every shutter is shut and curtains drawn, and there we sit in the salon, all arranged round in a semi-circle, and make conversation, and _sirop_ comes at nine, and, thank goodness, we get off to bed at ten! But even if you wanted to talk nicely to the person sitting by you you couldn't, because every one would at once stop what they were saying and listen. There is going to be an entertainment at the Tournelles' in about a week, a kind of _fête champêtre_. We are to dine in a pavilion in the garden, and then have a _cotillon_.-Good-bye, dear Mamma, with love from your affectionate daughter, Elizabeth. Château de Croixmare, _25th August_. [Sidenote: _Croixmare again_] Dearest Mamma,--The longer I stay, here the more glad I am that I am not French! Victorine is going to be shown to her future _fiancé_ to-day, but I must first tell you how it came about. We went to Château de Tournelle yesterday to pay our visit, Godmamma, Victorine, and I in the victoria, and Jean and Héloise in the phaeton. They were in the garden playing tennis with a party of friends from Versailles, and among them, of course, the Vicomte and "Antoine." They were all so glad to see me, and the Baronne called me her "_chère petite_," and kissed me on both cheeks, as if we had been parted for months. The Vicomte--when he had done putting his heels together and bowing to Victorine and me, and kissing Héloise's and Godmamma's hands--managed to get in, in a lower voice, that his ride from Versailles now seemed to him to have been very short. Upon which Victorine at once said, "_Comment?_" with the expression of a terrier whose ears are suddenly cocked up on the alert. He bowed more deeply than ever, and said that he was saying it was a long ride from Versailles! So you see that Frenchmen are not truthful, Mamma! Well--then we were sent to look at the gardens, accompanied by Jean and the Curé. [Sidenote: _An Untruthful Frenchman_]