Stay, I must just lock my door, and leave word with my neighbor on the next floor that I am gone out for the day," So she locked the door and left the message, and we started.

I was fortunate enough to find a close cab at the corner of the _marche_--she would have preferred an open one, but I overruled that objection on the score of time--and before very long we were seated in the cushioned fauteuils of a first-class compartment on the Orleans Railway, and speeding away towards Montlhery.
It was with no trifling sense of relief that I found the place really picturesque, when we arrived.

We had, it is true, to put up with a comfortless drive of three or four miles in a primitive, jolting, yellow omnibus, which crawled at stated hours of the day between the town and the station; but that was a minor evil, and we made the best of it.
First of all, we strolled through the village--the clean, white, sunny village, where the people were sitting outside their doors playing at dominoes, and the cocks and hens were walking about like privileged inhabitants of the market-place.

Then we had luncheon at the _auberge_ of the "Lion d'Or." Then we looked in at the little church (still smelling of incense from the last service) with its curious old altar-piece and monumental brasses.

Then we peeped through the iron gate of the melancholy _cimetiere_, which was full of black crosses and wreaths of _immortelles_.