I had notified Mr. Mairieux by telegram. We descended upon the place like a cyclone, with champagne, patties and cakes, a rattle of dishes and an uproar of cries and laughter. It was a great scandal in the country. The Mairieux family, shut up in the lodge, did not even show their noses at the windows. And when I visited them, I encountered icy frigidity. I enquired familiarly for news of their daughter, whom I had not seen. “And Raymonde?” “Mlle. Mairieux is very well,” replied her father solemnly. I left there the more depressed, because I felt that I had done wrong disturbing the peace of these good people. But then, are you compelled to place restraint upon yourself in order to retain the good opinion of your superintendent? Happily Mariette, the cook, comforted me with a word of welcome. But I dared not order another gratin from her. And the pretentious chef whom I had brought with me completely spoiled the one which he tried himself to prepare for me. * * * I wonder at landlords who live on their estates. How do they spend their time? As for me, I was always knocking about, always somewhere else. A year later I came back again, but this time alone. I had learned my lesson. My physician, somewhat alarmed by certain symptoms of overwork--physical overwork--had prescribed a rest cure. “You need a place where you will bore yourself,” he had said, “where you can stay a good month without any distraction. If I knew some thoroughly uncivilised spot I should send you there.” “Ah,” I said, “don’t look. I have the thing you want, my chateau in the Sleeping Woods.” He agreed, after some explanation, that it was perfect, and so behold me established in my own house by order of the doctor. Being distrustful of me the Mairieux family extended no invitations. They remembered my previous visit and maintained their reserve. But after all a superintendent is a superintendent, and I was certainly not going to cringe before him. My physician had condemned me to boredom; I was having it in abundance. There was no one to see, no one to talk to, and the length of the days made one believe that the sun had forgotten itself. * * * But--Spring was in the woods!