Of course I shall only take you there if you insist.  I have outgrown the playhouse.  I fancy that I am much more likely to sit out on the lawn and preach to you on how the theater has missed its mission than I am—­unless you insist—­to take you down to the hill to listen to Moliere or Racine.

If, however, that bores you,—­it would me,—­you can sit under the trees and close your eyes while I give you a Stoddard lecture without the slides.  I shall tell you about the little walled town of Crecy, still surrounded by its moat, where the tiny little houses stand in gardens with their backs on the moat, each with its tiny footbridge, that pulls up, just to remind you that it was once a royal city, with drawbridge and portcullis, a city in which kings used to stay, and in which Jeanne d’Arc slept one night on her way back from crowning her king at Rheims:  a city that once boasted ninety-nine towers.  Half a dozen of these towers still stand.  Their thick walls are now pierced with windows, in which muslin curtains blow in the wind, to say that to-day they are the humble homes of simple people, and to remind you of what warfare was in the days when such towers were a defense.  Why, the very garden in which you will be sitting when I tell you this was once a part of the royal estate, and the last Lord of the Land was the Duke de Penthievre.  I thought that fact rather amusing when I found it out, considering that the house I came so near to taking at Poigny was on the Rambouillet estate where his father, the Duke de Toulouse, one of Louis XIV’s illegitimate sons, died, where the Duke de Penthievre was born, and where he buried his naughty son, the Duke de Lamballe.

Of course, while I am telling you things like this you will have to bring your imagination into play, as very few vestiges of the old days remain.  I still get just as much fun out of Il y avait une fois, even when the “once on a time” can only be conjured up with closed eyes.  Still, I can show you some dear little old chapels, and while I am telling you about it you will probably hear the far-off, sad tolling of a bell, and I shall say to you “Ca sonne a Bouleurs.”  It will be the church bells at Bouleurs, a tiny, tree-shaded hamlet, on another hilltop, from which, owing to its situation, the bells, which rarely ring save for a funeral, can be heard at a great distance, as they have rung over the valley for years.  They sound so sad in the still air that the expression, Ca sonne a Bouleurs, has come to mean bad luck.  In all the towns where the bell can be heard, a man who is having bad luck at cards, or has made a bad bargain, or has been tricked in any way, invariably remarks, “Ca sonne a Bouleurs.”